


with a little daring do

by lovelyorbent



Series: they will know me by my teeth. [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Although I really didn't go into that as much as I was going to, Angel-bashing only inasmuch as Spike is always Angel-bashing, Butch/Femme, Cunnilingus, Dirty Talk, F/F, Inappropriate roleplay with a stake, Lesbian Sex, No Lesbians Die, Strap-Ons, Vaginal Fingering, Vampire Sex, enemies to lovers to enemies to friends to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:49:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27140674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelyorbent/pseuds/lovelyorbent
Summary: The first time they crossed paths Willow stared at Spike like she had grown a second head, although, Buffy reminded herself, it was possible she was just looking at the fangs. Or maybe the breasts. And, on one hand, you know, girl power, but on the other hand, ugh. What kind of monster went shirtless under a leather jacket?“Is she — ” Will said, with a look on her face that was something like mesmerized.“Is the Pope catholic, Will?” Xander asked.“Way different reactions to crosses, though,” Buffy pointed out. “And probably also to girl on girl action.”Willow choked.
Relationships: Spike & Dawn Summers, Spike/Buffy Summers
Series: they will know me by my teeth. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983988
Comments: 71
Kudos: 83





	with a little daring do

**Author's Note:**

> basically this is just if spike were a hot butch instead of what he is. i don't really have an explanation for this other than that i'm a lesbian and it's hot. goes canon divergent mid-season 6 because in this house, we don't like attempted rape and we don't like tara dying, we just like hot gay sex.
> 
> also i haven't proofread this and i never will so if you read it and are like hey this sucks, that's why
> 
> also cw i guess for mentions of a lesbian having sex with a man and also some slurs

**✧** **✧** **✧**

The new vampire in town was — well — different. For a moment, Buffy had looked at her and thought she was a man, for one. She was tall, for a woman — well, who wasn’t tall to Buffy — and angular and wore a long black duster that swirled in her wake like a pair of bat wings, that hid everything about her shape, except for the fact that she was wearing jeans and no shirt under it, which bared the inner curves of her breasts in a way that Buffy would probably like to call slutty, but which seemed to want for a different word.

Brazen, maybe. Brassy.

Her girl, now. _She_ was slutty, all dark curves spilling out of her dress and big wide fuck-me crazy eyes. And that was another different thing. Sunnydale was kind of a backwater nowhere sort of Hellmouth. The nearest Pride parade was in LA or San Francisco. They didn’t even have a gay bar, for crying out loud. It wasn’t like there weren’t any gay _people_ , but for the most part you didn’t see them, and they didn’t make noise.

This vampire made nothing _but_ noise. She had a wide sharp smile and kept her arm around her girl as much as possible. She was unmistakably masculine, or at least unfeminine. Loudly butch, that was the word. In LA Buffy had known a few lesbians, although none of them had been butch, but she knew enough to know the word. In Sunnydale, she had never seen anyone who dressed like this vampire, or acted like her. When she threatened her with death, Buffy just watched her leave, unable to do anything more than stand frozen and fascinated with horror. Not terror like screamy-runny-fainty, no, she was the Slayer, but _horror_ , like looking in the mirror in the morning before school and finding a giant zit on your nose.

Giles told her later, of course, that she _ought_ to make with the terror. That Spike — or Will the Bloody, or Bloody Mina, depending on what crusty old diary he had dug up — had killed two Slayers, and was looking for her third. It was just so hard to take anyone named Spike seriously, though. Or Wilhelmina, which seemed to be her actual name, which was both deeply Victorian and deeply _ridiculous_. Besides, how many vampires had threatened to kill Buffy before? What was one more?

“She’s got your name, Will,” she told Willow, giggling, when Giles had busted out that second name.

Willow did that little gasping thing with her mouth that meant she was looking for something smart to say in return. “Yeah, except no one’s ever called me ‘the’ anything! Definitely not _bloody_.”

“Will the Geeky,” Xander said, looking for any excuse not to keep reading whatever Giles had him reading. Willow pursed her lips at him, looking hurt and complimented at once.

“Will the Brainy,” Buffy suggested, and Willow beamed at her, cheeks going red.

“ _Will_ the lot of you pay attention?” Giles asked.

“Oh, sorry,” said Willow sheepishly, turning back to him.

**☾☾☾**

Spike ran her hand through Dru’s long, dark hair, her blunt nails lightly scratching her scalp in the way that made her purr with contentment. She’d done her homework on the Slayer — of course she had — and the main problem, for the moment, was Angelus. Not that she liked it much, but your sire had sway over you, and being her grandsire, he had sway over her. Not so much as Dru, which admittedly was partly due to the fact that if Dru asked her to pluck a star out of the sky for her, she’d make a good go of it even if Dru wasn’t her sire.

The point was, she knew things about the Slayer. But mostly she knew that perky sodding Buffy was just like the rest of them. All Slayers were alike, or at least all the ones she’d met. Running panting after death and denying it all the way.

Then again, most of them didn’t have friends. Not that _friends_ would slow Spike down.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

The first time they crossed paths Willow stared at Spike like she had grown a second head, although, Buffy reminded herself, it was possible she was just looking at the fangs. Or maybe the breasts. And, on one hand, you know, girl power, but on the other hand, ugh. What kind of monster went shirtless under a leather jacket?

“Is she — ” Will said, with a look on her face that was something like mesmerized.

“Is the Pope catholic, Will?” Xander asked.

“ _Way_ different reactions to crosses, though,” Buffy pointed out. “And probably also to girl on girl action.”

Willow choked.

**☾☾☾**

It was the hardest thing Spike had ever done, going behind Dru’s back. Going behind Dru’s back with the _Slayer_. Bouncy little fucking Buffy Summers. All chirpy sixteen, dressed like she couldn’t wait for Angelus to rail her, even though it had already happened and brought about some events that neither of them had liked very much.

Angelus always had bigger aspirations than Spike, most ways. Not captivated by the challenge of killing Slayers, but Slayers were only girls. Strong girls, yeah. Fast girls, trained girls, but just girls. You killed one, there was another one the next day. No lasting impact on the world when one went down, because they died every couple of years or so anyway. No, Angelus always thought bigger than that. Impactful, he was. Impactful, disdainful — he made Spike’s lip curl when he talked about how virginal Buffy had been, how hesitant and inexperienced, how boring. Not offense on her behalf, of course not that, but there was something deeply sodding disturbing about Angelus’ disgustingly pure love turning into rank obsession overnight when he had lost that soul of his.

Spike didn’t have a soul. Didn’t bloody want one. Who did? But she loved Dru despite that. She was obsessed with Dru, too, in that way that soullessness predisposed you towards, but more importantly, she _loved_ her. If it were only obsession she’d kill Angelus for laying a finger on her girl. Instead she sat by, feeling furious and humiliated, while Dru hung on him and called him _Daddy_ and giggled at his ministrations. _That_ was love. Sitting by. Letting Dru fawn over her grandsire because she knew it made her happy, even if it was only for a moment. Because she knew Dru would come back, when Angelus moved on from tormenting Spike by practically fucking her girl in front of her.

Or, well. She’d come back if the sodding world didn’t end. It couldn’t end, or Dru would stay on Angelus’ lap for the rest of time, petting her slim little fingers through his hair and cooing at him in her strange absent way. There were good things about the world, see. Dru was one of them, although more accurately she was a _terrible_ thing about the world, and Spike, who was even more terrible, loved her the more for it.

So: Buffy Anne Summers. Recently of LA. Presently guardian of the Hellmouth, which was yawning wider beneath her. Angelus’ object of his fucking weird bloody obsession. She was a shit student and a flitty little airhead, but she was a Valkyrie in battle. She invited Spike into her house like it was nothing, like she wasn’t even afraid, and Joyce mercifully didn’t ask her to sing a thing. Didn’t make any comment about her way of dress or talk, although admittedly Spike was careful to be charming when she was about.

Funny such a sensible woman could produce such a reckless little twit. And she _was_ little, Spike was realizing. She had had a general sense of it before, known in inches and feet the Slayer’s reach, but now that she was sitting down with her outside of a battle the full scope of it became apparent. The Slayer was barely five feet tall, if she had to guess. Half a foot shorter than Spike, probably a full foot shorter than Angelus.

Core of steel, though. Spike had to admire that in a woman, even if she _was_ the Slayer. It was going to taste so bloody sweet if she ever got her teeth in that girl’s neck. Pretty neck it was, too. The kind of neck she’d lure outside a bar with the insipid boyfriend she’d surely end up with some day if she survived.

Dru. She winced to think of her, and how she’d react if she could see Spike playing house with the Slayer. She’d have to take a meal on the way home, to get the scent of Slayer off her skin, or Dru would have a good cry. And Angelus would know, too. Well, she’d bathe in a little blood. Any lingering Buffy-scent could be explained away as the remnant of a fight.

Buffy’s fierce eyes pierced her from across the room, searching for a hint of deception.

Not unlike Dru, that. Her girl was always worried, but Spike, unlike Angelus, was always faithful. Admittedly, it was tempting to creep back through Buffy’s window later to kill her, but a deal was a deal, and anyway, where was the challenge in that?

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Spike drunk was funny, in a sort of pathetic kind of way. Her hair coming just a little out of its gelled-on shell, curling at her temples, her steps stumbling instead of catlike. She cried a _lot_. She said stupid things. And being mean to her was fun.

Buffy felt a little bad about that, honestly. That being mean to her was so fun, especially when she was so down. But Spike was mean right back, and, lest no one forget it, had _kidnapped her friends_ and _broken her promise_ and also _wanted to kill her_. So she didn’t feel bad enough to stop, although Angel had to step between them several times over the course of the evening.

If Buffy liked fighting at all, she liked fighting alongside Angel. Mostly because she got to watch him fight, but the pleasure of it had diminished a little bit since Angelus had made his visit, because she couldn’t quite shake off the wariness when she saw that particular tightness in his motion. But they worked together so well, too. It was like Angel always knew where she was. He wasn’t always a hundred percent up to speed with what she was doing, but he always figured it out fast enough.

Spike watched the two of them occasionally with hazy drunk eyes, like they were making her sad by existing in proximity to each other. It was because, Buffy realized after her little speech, they reminded her of herself and Drusilla. Which was both deeply insulting and also funny, in a pathetic way. She and Angel, of course, were in _love_. Which was very different from whatever nasty thing Drusilla and Spike had. Soulless demons couldn’t love. Angel was proof of that.

Angel looked back at Spike with a blank face, but occasionally with annoyed pity.

Buffy, well. She was mostly just annoyed.

**☾☾☾**

Drusilla knew just exactly how to hurt her. It wasn’t fucking men, no, she’d always known Dru still had an interest in that, and she’d never minded, not much. It wasn’t, maybe, what she’d like — Dru fucking anybody but her — but Dru had needs as sure as anyone else, and so when they found someone together, or found someone and Dru wanted her to watch, that was all right. It was _different_ when she was fucking people behind Spike’s back.

Particularly when they were so bloody disgusting. It was like saying _oy, love, I know you’d rip your heart out and dust yourself for me but I’d rather get some fungus demon’s prick wet than yours_. Not that Dru would have put it like that, mostly because she didn’t talk like that.

The cheating, though, she could have stood that. She loved Dru. She would do anything for Dru. She had once held her hand in the sun for almost half a minute because Dru had asked her to, and spent a week recovering from the burns. A little bit of Dru sleeping around she could take no problem.

But Dru didn’t hardly look at her anymore. Not the same way she had before. Like she could see every corner of Spike’s soul. Now it was more like looking through her the way she looked through everyone else. _That_ stung like a bitch. The feeling of love slipping away.

And to blame it on _the Slayer_. To blame it on Spike!

Like she’d been the one running around. And yes, all right, she’d engaged in a little betrayal with Buffy. But not that sort! Never that sort. It had been for Dru, anyway.

This had nothing to do with Buffy, she thought, resolved, as she downed her fifth shot of Jack. This had everything to do with Dru trying to twist the stake and naught at all with Little Miss Priss. And that was what she loved about Dru, she tried to remind herself. The pain. How well Dru knew her, to hurt her so completely.

Sixth shot. The only reason she still thought about Buffy was because she was the one who got away. The Slayer that got away, that was. Otherwise she’d be perfectly happy ignoring her for the rest of time to be with Dru.

Seventh. Besides, she wouldn’t take Angelus’ sloppy seconds again.

Eight. Buffy was perfectly attractive and all, but she wasn’t Spike’s type. Dru was Spike’s type. Pretty, femme, passionate, creative. A giggling, sweet monster. God, she missed her.

  1. All right, that was it. Dwelling on Buffy was exactly what Dru wanted, wasn’t it?



10

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Harmony had a _girlfriend_?

Harmony, she could have sworn, liked boys. At least she had in high school.

It made more sense when she found out it was Spike, somehow. Harmony was exactly the kind of girl Spike liked, if your entire sample size was Drusilla, and based on the fact that apparently Drusilla had _made_ Spike, Buffy felt fairly confident about her entire sample size being Drusilla. No brain to speak of, mean and girly. Slutty, too.

And, if you were a vampire, Buffy guessed she could see the appeal of Spike. She was attractive, in a sort of — well, in a sort of androgynous way. She had good bones, anyway, and she acted like the sort of person who was good in bed, not that Buffy knew much about that. And there was the vampire-world prestige of being the slayer of Slayers, even though Spike hadn’t made an attempt on her in a while, although, she realized, she’d never actually rescinded her invitation to the house.

Something told her that Spike would _definitely_ be game to misuse that access, but not to kill her in her sleep. She seemed to like the chase more than anything.

Too busy fucking Harmony, too, Buffy thought, and giggled.

**☾☾☾**

The first real thing Spike did after she had ahold of the Gem of Amara was to walk out into the sunlight, and feel it on her face for the first time in a hundred and twenty years. The second thing that Spike did after she had ahold of the Gem of Amara was to go after the Slayer. It had been a while, and she couldn’t have the Slayer getting all complacent about having her in town. Buffy had mostly left her alone since she’d come back, having moved on to the next Big Bad, and that didn’t sit well with Spike. It was as good a time as any to remind her that Spike was Bad too.

Besides, fighting in the sun was a novelty. She could see Buffy much better this way, although neither of them was exactly a slouch in the night vision department. Night washed the colors out of things, and Spike had adapted her own palette for that, wearing mostly black, white, and grey. Buffy did no such thing, so it was a little fun to see what colors she actually was in the daytime, under real light.

Her hair was really beautiful, she thought absently, as they scrambled after each other in the quad. Night made it look darker than it was; this was how it was meant to look. Sun-kissed.

Stupid thought, really.

Then Buffy wrested the ring from her hand and she had to get to the sewers right quick.

Beaten again, she thought, willing herself to be surprised, still panting from the fight.

Well, there’d be another one. Another fight.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

After she came out from under the spell, Buffy felt beyond foolish. She had spent the afternoon curled up on Spike’s lap, her fingers running through the woman’s short bright hair, their mouths attached like they had been sharing air. She hadn’t kissed a woman before, and in some ways, it was possible to ignore the fact that Spike _was_ a woman.

She didn’t look much like most of the women Buffy knew, that was for sure. Her hair was kept cropped short, her shoulders broad and muscular, her face sharp and dangerous. She kept her nails painted, that was true, but they were short and the varnish was always ragged. It wasn’t feminine in the slightest, and on the few occasions she had seen Spike wearing makeup even that had never detracted from that impression. She had breasts, of course — and it seemed like they were always hanging out from under her coat, since she seemed to consider bras pointless and shirts optional — but on the whole any curves that she had were usually hidden. She swaggered like a man and fought and talked like one too.

But she wasn’t one. Buffy never really forgot that, even if she liked to pretend that she could. And to tell the truth, it was much easier than usual to remember when she was perched on her lap, one hand on the shallow swell of her breast, Spike’s tongue down her throat and blunt fingers gripping her ass. It had gotten her so hot at the time, Spike’s arms around her, her mouth open against her throat, blunt human teeth scraping her collarbone. The vampire tinglies that told her when they were around had never stopped going off even when she had been sitting on her, but they had added excitement to the whole thing, really.

Thank god Giles had been blind. Xander and Willow and Anya knowing was bad enough. She wasn’t sure if she could have lived it down if _Giles_ had seen. Not the fact that she had been getting all with the snuggles on his couch with a woman, but that the woman had been _Spike_. Ugh. Spike. Evil undead.

Actually, the fact that it had been Spike was troubling her much more in general than the thought that it had been a woman. The idea that she had hoped being with a woman the first time would be someone else had briefly popped into her mind, and when she turned it over in her head again, that seemed much more outrageous than the idea that she had been kissing a woman at all.

Well. She was going to have to talk to Willow about _that_. Willow was her best friend, after all. She would have to understand, even if it was a little unexpected.

She still liked men, she reasoned — Angel had set her on _fire_ , after all, and Riley made her feel almost shy and girlish, although maybe that feeling would evolve when they had dated a little longer. It was just, maybe. When she considered the idea of Spike’s long legs in her dark, ratty jeans, or the feel of her slim hands on the curves of Buffy’s waist, that wasn’t so bad either.

Spike had tried to sneak a hand between her legs — right there on the armchair! — but she had batted her away. She hadn’t stopped her whispering filthy things in her ear, though. She felt tingly when she thought about them again. Gross, too, because _Spike_ was gross, but no boy had ever talked to her like that before. Angel would probably have staked himself before telling her he wanted to “shove fingers up your snatch until you weep, pet.” And Riley seemed far too polite to even consider something like that.

Oh, god, she thought. Riley. She’d told Riley she was getting _married_. At least she hadn’t told him to who. _That_ was a conversation she’d already had too many times.

**☾☾☾**

Buffy smelled like sunshine. She kissed like a demon, and Spike ought to know. She had kissed plenty of demons, and a couple of men besides, which was generally worse, and she had to wonder where the silly little girl had learned that from, since she’d seen Angelus kiss and even for an undead nightmare, he was boring about it. Her boy now, Uncle Sam, he wasn’t much better from the looks of him. Looked like he knew missionary position but not where a girl’s clit was. Looked like he’d never put his tongue up a girl’s arse. Looked like Buffy probably got embarrassed if she forgot to shave for him.

Where she’d learned how to kiss that way didn’t matter, anyway. She was hot in Spike’s arms, mouth open and sweet, golden hair framing her face.

There was a groundswell of warmth in Spike’s chest that took her off guard as she bent to kiss her again. Buffy was so little, she thought fondly. She fit just perfectly in her arms. Just the right size to pick up, to bend down to. “Buffy,” she whispered, and Buffy kissed her again, this time tender. “Buffy, I love you,” she said. “I love you so much — “

Spike woke with a start from her sleep, and dread swung into her like a wrecking ball.

The goddamn Slayer. The goddamned fucking Slayer.

She put her head in her hands, and Harmony sat up next to her. Another straight little blonde girl, or another little blonde girl who thought she was straight, until she got in touch with Spike’s magical goddamn dyke fingers. God, since Dru she’d been fucking only blondes, she realized. Not peroxide blondes. Not strawberry blondes, not platinum blondes. Buffy blondes. Golden hair.

“Spikey?” Harmony said.

Spike resisted the urge to tear her head off. She was always right on the edge of doing it, but for all her faults, Harmony was an impeccable shag. She tried so hard. And she had such beautiful tits.

Not beautiful like Buffy’s. Buffy’s were supported by a bit of muscle, see, perky like they belonged to a woman who did push-ups on the regular, although she wasn’t actually sure Buffy needed to stoop to a thing like that. Harm’s were bigger, dropped lower on her chest. They were really gorgeous, Spike thought ruefully, but no, they weren’t Buffy’s. She growled, more to herself than Harmony, but the little idiot shrunk away anyway.

“Fuck,” she said, into her hands. How much could walking out into sunlight hurt anyway? “Dru was right.”

“Dru was right about what?” Harmony asked, voice sweet with confusion.

“Don’t worry your pretty head about it, kitten,” she said absently, and flopped back into the bed. Harmony snuggled back into her side, her fantastic breasts pressing into Spike’s arm, chin perched on her shoulder, and that was it. Spike’s skin was crawling.

She ripped her arm out of Harmony’s grasp and rolled out of bed, reaching for her pack of lights and stalking outside to smoke in the graveyard, bare-chested under the moon.

Maybe if she was lucky the Slayer would pass by on one of her patrols and think she had decent tits herself, she thought bitterly.

**☾☾☾**

Spike sat exactly like everyone expected her to, thighs splayed and body draped across the back of the chair in a careless slump, one hand wrapped around her beer as she bared her sharp teeth in an amused smile. “Baby, I’ve _always_ been bad.”

Buffy rolled her eyes, and sat back in her own chair to listen.

When she told the story she left out the bleeding corset she had been stuffed into, the hideous scrape of the pins in her hair, the horrible sodding shoes that pinched her toes. She left out the poetry, and the adamantine glitter of Cecily’s eyes, because she sincerely doubted that Buffy would appreciate them the way they were meant to be appreciated. Left out the cruelty, too, although she considered seeing whether pity would earn her a little regard where confidence hadn’t.

Just Angelus, Darla. Just Dru. She couldn’t resist a little poetry there. She had been in love with Dru for more than a hundred years, after all, before this sunny little girl with her steely determined eyes and her fucking stakes and holy water and _god damned_ garlic had come along. Dru’s night-dark hair, her empty soul, her fathomless depths couldn’t be ignored so easily even in story — god, what a princess. What the fuck had to be wrong with Spike, to let that slip through her fingers in favor of the disdain and arrogance of the Slayer.

It didn’t make the chit jealous, of course it didn’t. Instead it was making her bored, Spike could tell, and annoyed, but what did that matter. She was always annoyed, even when Spike was giving her exactly what she bloody wanted.

Lessons. Never drop your weapon. Never be without it. I am never without mine.

The story of the first Slayer spilled like blood. Like the girl’s inky hair over the dirt floor where she’d killed her. The idea of it sent shivers through her. How her dead heart would have pounded to have Buffy like that, once. Bleeding out on the floor. Lovely little neck torn out. The thought of it was still compelling, even though it wasn’t possible anymore.

_All I need is one good day._

Well, she hadn’t had a good one for a while. Slayer had had plenty of bad ones, though. Someday, someone else would get her, maybe. _That_ thought was like a stake through the heart.

The Slayer was _hers_.

The story of the second Slayer she used like a whip to draw Buffy into a frenzy. She was wild with the dance they were moving through, golden hair tumbling with her movement, her limbs quivering with energy, like the moment before a fight or after a fuck. What Spike wouldn’t have given for _that_ opportunity. To touch her hot little body just like this, bear her down on the pavement. Maybe she wasn’t queer like her little friends, but there was _something_ there, that same Slayer-heat for death that the others always had. She was breathless with it, practically panting with the trembling desire for that final peak.

They were nose to nose, and Buffy’s eyes were black pits. Her hot breath was close enough to taste on the air, and it tasted vaguely like arousal. Hmm, Spike thought, maybe she _was_ a little queer.

She leaned forward, drawn in like a charmed snake. Buffy leaned forward too, and she could swear her still heart jumped. Then the Slayer shoved her back hard, using that lovely strength of hers to send her hurtling to the pavement.

“It wouldn’t be you, Spike.” Her eyes were hard, her lips set in a thin, angry line. She would be beautiful, if she wasn’t cruel. She was beautiful even when she was cruel. More beautiful, maybe. “It would _never_ be you. You’re beneath me.”

Oh, that _hurt_. Buffy couldn’t know how much, but it didn’t matter. Spike’s anger blazed in her chest as she scrambled to her feet, tearing off in the opposite direction from Buffy’s retreating back.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

There wasn’t any way, Buffy thought. No way that Dawn was right. Spike _hated_ her. _She_ hated Spike. They fought like a well-oiled machine together, yes. She was strong, although not as strong as Buffy. Fast, though not as fast as Buffy. But most importantly, she seemed to have a preternatural awareness of where Buffy was and what she needed, which could perhaps be chalked up to the fact that most Master vampires seemed to have that sort of awareness about the Slayer. Other than Angel — and it had been different with Angel — there was only Spike that she had tried fighting alongside, so she couldn’t test that theory, but it seemed the only sensible one.

And yet. And _yet_.

Spike _was_ acting weird. Spike had been acting weird for weeks. Being oddly nice to her. Turning up outside her house. Showing up on patrol. She had turned from an occasional grudging ally into a shadow, although she still behaved like the same absolute bitch she had always been.

Well, usually. Not always. She had offered Buffy liquor tonight, asked about her musical tastes. Before she had led her into what was distinctly not the right frigging nest of vampires. As if she was making an excuse to spend time with her. Buffy rounded on her just as she was lighting up.

“Is this a date?” she asked, furious.

Spike sputtered, the cigarette falling from her fingers. Buffy had never actually seen her thrown so solidly off her guard. “A — please, a date? You are completely off your bird,” she replied, her voice so high it cracked. A long pause. Her voice went soft, her scarred eyebrow flattening out, eyes sparking a little. “… do you want it to be?”

Buffy could have screamed. She looked Spike up and down, her duster hanging heavy around her shoulders, and the shirt underneath it looked clean, for once. At least she was _wearing_ a shirt. Her pale skin, pale hair, her crystal blue eyes trained unerringly on Buffy’s. That spark, she realized, was hope. She almost staked her there and then, just to get rid of the problem. “Ugh!” she said, and saw hurt flash in Spike’s eyes. “Oh my god. Are you out of your _mind_?”

“It’s not so unusual, two people in the workplace — feelings develop — ”

“No!” Buffy said, and could hear herself growing hysterical. “No, no, feelings do not develop. No feelings!”

“Well, I know I’m — ”

“A _vampire_?”

“Well, I was going to say a _woman_ — ”

“You’re a _vampire_!”

“ _Angel_ was a vampire!”

“Angel was _good_ —”

“I can be too. I’ve changed, Buffy.”

“What, that chip in your head? That's not change. That’s just holding you back. You're like a serial killer in prison — “

“Women marry them all the time!” Buffy narrowed her eyes and made a disparaging noise, and Spike corrected herself quickly. “I’m not like that. Something's happening to me. I can't stop thinking about you.”

Buffy nearly screamed again. “You, you don’t know what you mean. You don’t know what feelings are,” she spat, and saw the words hit Spike, anger flashing in her eyes, a throwback to the old days when she hadn’t been fucking toothless and had spent all her time trying to bag a third Slayer. How she wished for that back.

Spike growled, a sound that triggered every danger impulse in her body even though she knew the vampire couldn’t so much as lay a finger on her without having a migraine for the rest of the day. “I damn well do. I lie awake every night — ”

“You sleep during the day!”

Spike threw her hands up. “You are missing the point. I love —”

“Don’t!” Buffy said, resisting the inhumanly strong and childish urge to stamp her foot on the ground. “Don’t say it. _I’m going_.”

She turned on her heel and left Spike standing there.

**☾☾☾**

The fucking robot had been a bad idea. Of course it had been a bad idea — it was the sort of thing a _man_ would do, build a woman for himself who couldn’t say no. Like she didn’t bloody love it when Buffy said no to her, putting that adorable little foot down and giving her a tongue-lashing, even when it hurt. But it was almost worth it, even knowing they all knew exactly what she’d been doing with the sodding thing, when the robot kissed her bruised face and offered to take the pressure of Glory off her.

This had been what she’d wanted. Fucking she could get off anyone. There were any number of girls, human girls or non-human ones, who would let her lay them down and fuck them proper. She barely had to crook her little finger to get pussy in this town, even though it didn’t have a gay scene — she was hot shit and she knew it, and girls loved that.

But this, the kiss. She could get kissing elsewhere, but not like this. It wouldn’t soothe her like a kiss from Buffy. She ached all over; broken and bruised and knowing she would be wearing these injuries for weeks even with her accelerated healing. She wanted something tender. Dru would have petted a hand through her hair and let her bury her face in the side of her leg, would have sung to her in her high lilting voice, talked nonsense to her until she fell asleep. Her bloody crazy little bird, she had needed more help than she gave, but when Spike was at her lowest, Dru was usually there with soft hands, unless there was Angelus for her to moon over.

Her body ached good and proper at the gentleness, and with a heart that couldn’t decide whether to sink or soar, she knew as soon as Buffy looked away just after the kiss that it wasn’t the robot.

It was _Buffy_.

She would have known in a second that it was, if she hadn’t just freshly had the hell beat out of her. Buffy and the robot didn’t act alike — enough alike to get her off, but not enough that she couldn’t tell the difference. She thought if her jaw could move properly it would probably have fallen open. Instead, she gritted her teeth hard enough to hurt the loose ones and said, just to let Buffy knew that she knew, “And my robot?”

“The robot is gone,” Buffy told her. “The robot was gross and obscene. That thing, it wasn’t even real.”

As if Spike didn’t bloody know that. Warren could do a lot of bloody amazing things with technology, but a robot just wasn’t a person. The sex had been — well, it had been bad, to be frank, only tolerable because it was Buffy, or an approximation of her, which was probably because Warren had never once made a bird come in his miserable little life. But the personality, that hadn’t been the same at all, and on the whole, it wasn’t Buffy’s body that got Spike so hot she couldn’t hardly breathe in her presence.

Didn’t hurt, sure. But ultimately it was the woman Buffy was that she was in love with, and not her gorgeous tits. And the robot hadn’t been that woman, not least because the woman wouldn’t lower herself to touching Spike like that.

Kiss was a start, though. Anything she might have said got caught in her throat.

“What you did for me and Dawn, _that_ was real,” Buffy continued, seriously. “I won’t forget it.”

**✧** **✧** **✧**

It was bizarre, to rely this much on Spike.

 _Spike_.

Evil undead.

But for whatever reason — and Buffy did _not_ want to think about the reason — she was being reliable. Reliable to the point that Buffy didn’t even have to think about asking for things, sometimes, because Spike would just turn up with the same idea. Reliable to the point where Buffy knew she could just call and Spike would turn up, even when the sun was shining.

Even Willow wasn’t that reliable, although admittedly Willow had a life and a girlfriend, and Spike had an empty crypt and a huge crush on Buffy.

Buffy had Dawn, and that was all that mattered.

**☾☾☾**

There was not a damn thing to be said when Buffy hit the ground.

Not a damn thing.

Her pretty little body broken on the rubble. Throat outstretched in death, green eyes closed peacefully, hair splayed out about her tipped head. For a moment Spike thought of turning her, of trying to turn her, although she knew it was too late. It was too late and Buffy would hate her for it.

On the other hand, Buffy already hated her. Being hated was bearable; Buffy being dead was not. But it was too late. It was too late and Buffy wouldn’t want it. And no one else would want it, either. Better dead than a soulless demon in their minds.

She couldn’t look at the body any longer. She buried her face in her hands, and knew the others wouldn’t see it, because they, too, were wrapped up in the death of the Slayer.

It hurt like a bitch. She’d lost love before, but never like this. This felt more like the death of her mother, which had also happened after she had lost her soul. Like a pit was open in her chest and bleeding. Like something precious was gone from the world.

Because something was.

And now, the countdown to eternity began.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Buffy knew good and well that she was right about vampires. All darkness. Angel had shown her that — kind and gentle with a soul, horrifying monster without it. The demon took over, when a vampire was made. Pushed out the person. She had seen it. Spike was only different insofar as she was collared. If she’d never had that chip in her head, she would be the same killer today that she had always been. In fact, she would probably have done her level best to bag her third Slayer multiple times after the Gem of Amara, until Buffy managed to take her down. Certainly she would never have been able to convince herself that she had fallen in _love_ with Buffy.

And yet.

Since she’d come back from the dead she had been having trouble drawing the line as sharply as she had always done. Mostly, that was down to two things. The first was that, according to everyone, Spike had spent the almost five months of Buffy’s decomposition haunting the halls of Revello Drive, keeping Dawn in good spirits. It wasn’t impressive that she had been backing up the Scoobies, since she’d flatly said that she killed demons to get her fix of violence. But hanging out with a heartbroken teenager whose sister had plunged to a bone-shattering death on her behalf for no apparent reason other than that Dawn was sad… that was _something_.

Spike didn’t _get_ anything out of that. No sex, no blood, no violence — the three things vampires liked. According to Dawn’s vague hints, she had even been paying for pizza and movie rentals, which was about as unlike Spike’s pay-me-for-information schtick as it possibly could be. Even after Buffy was back, Spike kept coming around to keep Dawn’s spirits up, and the sight of her in the living room with her feet up on the table and her arm slung over the back of the couch was becoming a familiar one. She bothered Buffy sometimes while she was there, but mostly it seemed that she was genuinely there for Dawn.

The second thing was that since she’d clawed her way out of the grave, Spike had been the only person she’d been remotely able to relate to. Willow was too different. Xander was too the same. Dawn was too fragile. Giles was too brittle. Spike was mostly as she had always been, but also not. Less obnoxious, mostly, although only slightly.

Her face had crumpled in on itself when she had recognized the damage to Buffy’s hands — the missing nails, the bloodied knuckles — and her hands had been unbearably gentle and cool when she had cleaned out the damage.

She had listened with a hollow face when Buffy told her about Heaven, as if, although she couldn’t possibly have _empathy_ , she understood the violation. The pain of being torn from joy back into suffering. It became a regular thing, walking in the graveyard during patrol, Spike sucking on a cigarette and listening quietly to her complaining, occasionally interjecting an acidic comment that was almost, through the shell Buffy had formed around herself, funny.

There was no pressure on the time they spent together, that was the nice thing. No Willow hoping for gratitude, no Xander hoping for laughter, no expectations from Giles or Dawn that she would be who she had been before. Spike just held the bad guys for her while she stabbed them in the chest twice as hard as she really needed to to get the job done.

And if she watched Spike’s mouth around the cigarette, lashes lit by the burning end of it, that was her own business. “So when did _you_ crawl out of a grave?” she asked, on a quiet night when they were passing the place where she had been buried. “I thought vampires turned faster than that.”

“Got knocked out in the 1930s,” Spike said, shrugging and taking another drag. “They thought I was dead, because I am. Tossed me in a grave before I came to. Worst part of it was they had the good manners to put me in a sodding dress before they did it.”

Buffy recalled what a pain in the ass it was to use your legs to lever up the top of a coffin when your skirts were hanging around your waist and the dirt that fell from the grave went straight onto your bare legs. “Ugh,” she said. “Whenever I die again, bury me in pants. Just in case.”

“Thin skirts were in at the time,” Spike remembered. “Ripped them to hell trying to get out of the dirt. Bright side is they didn’t bother with a coffin, buried me too quick for that. Dru was waiting for me topside. I was so angry with her that she didn’t help me get out, but she just started giggling, you know, and I couldn’t keep on blaming her.”

Buffy grimaced. “ _I_ could have.”

“Well, I loved her then,” Spike said, musing. “You can forgive someone you love for anything.”

“ _You_ can,” Buffy relied, thinking of Angel, who had gone to Tibet instead of Sunnydale when he had heard of her death.

Spike looked at her sideways, and offered her a hip flask.

Buffy took it.

**☾☾☾**

It had been so fucking long since Spike had been with a girl who could slam her up against the wall. Dru could have, probably, but never did; she preferred her tortures subtler. She had _never_ been with a girl who could slam her through a _floor_. And it was the Slayer. God, it was _Buffy_. Kissing _her_. Kissing her like sucking the air out of her dead lungs could kill her.

She landed hard on the concrete and didn’t let go of Buffy. Her hands went to the back of her shirt to shove it up, fumbling with the clasp of her bra like she was some sort of bloody schoolboy and not a century-old lesbian who had many times fucked a woman wearing a whalebone corset and three layers of skirts.

Why the fuck, honestly, were back-clasps popular, now? A front-clasp gave you the opportunity to get into a girl’s tits. Back-clasps you couldn’t hardly see.

Then again, it wasn’t like she needed an excuse to get into Buffy’s tits. When she had gotten her bra undone and her shirt pushed up, she shoved her face in between them to kiss her sternum, and Buffy gasped and scrambled to have the shirt off, letting Spike get her mouth on her left breast. “ _Fuck_ , love,” she murmured against the wet skin, and Buffy snarled at her and dragged her up by her shirt, tearing it at the shoulder seams.

“Don’t call me that.”

Spike growled, and surged up off the floor, toppling the two of them again into a pile of rubble, this time with Buffy beneath her, her hands fisted in the half-torn shirt until Spike ripped the duster off and tossed it to the side. Then Buffy tore the shirt off her body, coming over her head so fast it hurt her ears. “No coming back from that,” Spike said with satisfaction, and chalked the now-tattered garment up to a worthwhile loss, smearing her mouth down the line of Buffy’s belly, across her hipbones. What pretty hips they were, too. Gorgeous legs, or so she remembered from when Buffy had used to wear those sweet little miniskirts into battle. God, maybe she could convince her to do that again. There was nothing she’d like better than to stick her face up one of those things. Instead, she nosed at the crotch of Buffy’s jeans, running her tongue up the fabric and scenting the familiar aroma of arousal beneath them. “Take off your trousers, Slayer.”

Together the two of them made quick work of the jeans, and when Buffy had got them off, she shoved Spike over again and they rolled until she had Buffy on her back again, half-on the duster, half-off. Buffy struggled against her for a few moments before she realized that Spike was crawling down her body, and then she made a strangled noise and spread her legs.

“Gorgeous,” Spike breathed, and then buried her face there, where she’d wanted to have it for ages. _Bet Angelus never ate you like this_ , she thought, when she laved her tongue up the center of Buffy and sucked on her clit. _Bet your little soldier boy was too much of a boy scout to kiss you here_. Buffy was making wounded sounds, like she’d never had it so good, while Spike used her lips and tongue and teeth to bring her off, sucking on her swollen cunt just enough to make her quiver. The floor underneath them trembled when Buffy arched, and Spike trembled when she wrapped those magnificent, muscled thighs around her head to hold her there. It was a good thing that she had no need to breathe, although drowning in pussy wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, really. Especially not this pussy. The Slayer was tight and neat and pink here just as she was everywhere else.

“God,” she gasped against Buffy’s opening, until a heel in her back drove her back to her work. She shoved a hand into her own trousers to rub at herself while she let Buffy grind herself off against her nose until her body tightened almost painfully around Spike’s ears, blocking her ability to hear the cry of pleasure that signaled the Slayer’s climax. “Oh, you come _so_ easy, kitten,” she panted when Buffy relaxed, before she licked her again, broad-tongued and deep. “So easy for me, love, let me eat you again.”

“Yes,” Buffy said, “Yes, _yes_ — ” and clamped her legs back around Spike’s shoulders, so hard that her bones ached under the onslaught.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Spike was consuming her, Buffy thought, as she walked through the graveyard, the muscles of her legs aching with tension. And she didn’t even _like_ her. But their fuck had been all she’d been able to think about since it had happened. The first distraction she’d had that had done anything to make her feel like she wasn’t in hell. She’d lost count of how many times she’d come, on Spike’s tongue or her fingers or rutting against her leg, until her body had been exhausted and her mind had been empty. When her mind was empty she couldn’t feel despair, which was an improvement over the usual.

And when she’d woken to find Spike, bruised and bloody, her back carved open by Buffy’s fingers, her collarbone and breasts purple from Buffy’s mouth, she hadn’t felt the shame she had expected to feel, at least not at first. Her first thought, in fact, was that Spike had been _good_. That she wanted her again.

Her _second_ thought had been shame. But it hadn’t been enough to keep her from crawling into Spike’s lap when she’d dragged her into another kiss, and it hadn’t been enough to keep her own hand from drifting between her legs during the shower she had taken to scrub Spike off her skin.

Her clit ached from overuse, which had cured her of that urge soon enough, but even that hadn’t stopped her from thinking about it all day. Her first time with a woman, she thought despairingly, and it had been _Spike_. Her _last_ time with Spike, she had assured herself at the time, but now — barely more than a day later — she was standing at the door of the crypt feeling fevered with want.

Spike opened the door with her shirt open to the waist, a wicked smile on her lips as soon as she saw Buffy. Buffy hated that it sent a frisson down her spine to see that grin, to remember that mouth. “Got something for you, Slayer,” she said, voice rough and hot with want.

“If you say it’s your tongue, I’ll dust you now,” Buffy snapped, pretty sure she had reached the rage stage of horniness, if that was indeed a thing.

Spike’s grin was blinding. “No, but you can have that too.”

At that, Buffy launched herself at her, and Spike caught her in her arms as if she weighed nothing, whisking her into the crypt and slamming her into the cold stone wall to devour her mouth. Angel had always been so careful with her, tender even when they had been so hot for each other that it took everything they had to keep their hands off each other. Spike was all passion, one hand under her ass, the other on her waist, kissing her so hard that it took Buffy’s arms around her neck and legs around her waist to keep herself anchored against it.

Even when she and Riley had been under the influence of lustful ghosts, she had never felt this desperate for it. That was a trance and this was a drug. She gasped, and her fingers clawed against Spike’s back as she was carried down into the crypt.

“I promise you, Slayer,” Spike said, against her mouth as she tossed her down on the bed and turned away. “Best dick you’ll ever have.”

Buffy opened her mouth.

“Say my grandsire’s name and you’ll find your hot little body on the other side of my door, lover,” Spike said, as if she knew Buffy had been about to speak, buckling something across her hips.

Buffy was just about to do it, but then Spike turned around, and sitting on her hips was a jutting cock, strapped to her with what looked like leather. “ _Ah_ ,” she said instead, her mouth falling open, and watched Spike’s mouth curl up into a smile. “Is that — ”

Spike crawled up the bed between her legs, and Buffy’s eyes never left her cock. She hadn’t seen Angel’s hardly at all, and had never spent too long looking at Riley’s or Parker’s, but now she couldn’t look away from the slick black plastic. “My prick,” Spike answered, and started sucking kisses into her breasts, and then up against her throat. Funny, Buffy thought. Spike could hurt her, could kill her, even, but instead of making her shiver with fear, having her teeth against her throat just made her wet.

Spike’s fingers slipped against her as they kissed, one wriggling up inside her while her thumb rubbed almost harshly against her clit. “So wet,” she murmured against Buffy’s mouth. “Love this cunt of yours, Slayer. Could spend eternity with my tongue up you, my fingers. Getting you wet for my cock.”

Buffy rolled her hips against the fingers Spike was feeding into her, mouth open, heart pounding. Her eyes caught on the bulge of Spike’s bicep as she held herself above her, the curve of her breast heaving gently with the motion of her hand inside Buffy. “Well, you’ve got about an hour, Spike,” she said, voice tremulous with pleasure.

“Ask me for it,” Spike said, two fingers curling up inside her now. “Ask me, damn you.”

Buffy could hear own her breaths coming out of her chest like sobs as Spike worked her harder than Riley ever would have dared to. “Fuck me,” she snarled, and Spike bit her lip so hard it bled, then sucked on it, groaning at the taste and then tonguing the split while Buffy writhed under her. “Fuck me!” she repeated, a demand this time, and Spike pulled her hand out to stroke the dildo with Buffy’s wetness.

It hurt a bit when she slid it in, a little too rough, not slick enough, but the feeling eased once it had gone into her a time or two, gotten wet enough with her. She realized she was making little punched-out moans every time Spike’s hips plunged into her, and arched up to suck one of her nipples into her mouth, drawing a deep groan from Spike as she continued her heavy driving rhythm. “Such a sweet body, Slayer,” Spike said, panting. “Could fuck you forever. Stay in this tight cunny until one of us starves.”

“Shut up,” she said harshly, but Spike just laughed. She looked commanding like this, body tightly drawn and moving with precision. Vampires didn’t sweat, but the ripple of her muscles showed her exertion, screwing her hips in faster and harder than a human woman could give, pounding Buffy faster and harder than a human woman could take.

It was good. _God_ , it was good. Buffy’s face burned with embarrassment at how wet she was, how close, how fast. She’d been turned on already when she turned up at her door, she reasoned. She wasn’t easy. She was just horny.

“Look at those pretty tits,” Spike crooned. “Could watch those things bounce for days without getting bored.”

Her teeth sunk into Buffy’s neck, blunt and hard, and Buffy _screamed_ , shaking in her arms. Her vision greyed out a little with her orgasm, and when she came to, sweating, she was now sitting astride Spike’s hips, still firmly impaled on her.

“Ride me to the next one, Slayer,” Spike said, voice smooth. “Want to do those tits of yours justice this time.”

**☾☾☾**

She knew it was Buffy as soon as she had her up against the wall, from the scent of her shampoo, the scent of her cunt, so strong she must have been wet on the way over here, but it still bore asking. “Buffy?”

“I told you to stop trying to see me.”

What a fucking pity that was, really. Seeing Buffy naked was one of the best things about fucking her. All that sun-kissed golden skin, golden hair. The dazed look in her eyes after the fifth time she’d come. Her perky little breasts, her perfect mouth, the lovely muscles shifting under her skin when she thrashed under Spike. But Spike leaned into the kiss anyway, knowing her well enough to get Buffy panting against her in minutes, leaning into her against the wall until Spike took her by her waist — how well she knew the distance between her mouth and her hips, she thought ruefully, to be able to find it on the first try — and pushed her towards the opening in the floor.

After a few steps Buffy disappeared from her hands, and there was the sound of the ladder, and then when she jumped down it herself, trusting her girl to get out of the way, she was met with her own dark bedroom, no one obviously inside, but the nerves that told her the slayer was around were jangling. It set her on high alert, and a smile spread over her face, sharp and white. It was the sort of smile that made prey quail, but not Buffy. Buffy never quailed.

She opened her mouth, tasting the air, and caught the heavy flavor of Buffy’s arousal. She tripped on something on the floor as she moved smoothly forward, and, picking it up, found that it was Buffy’s shoes, which were invisible too. “Ha,” she breathed, and whipped around, following the instincts that told her where danger was hiding.

Silence in the room, and then a noise that sounded like jeans dropping to the floor.

“Christ, Slayer,” she growled, and heard the hitch of Buffy’s breath from somewhere to her right. The girl could lie about it until the end of time, but she liked the violence of it, Spike knew she did. She would give her a good chase, if she wanted. “Want me to give you a good seeing to, hmm?”

“You talk too much,” Buffy said, now on her left.

“You _love_ it, kitten,” Spike purred, and lunged for her. Buffy’s bare leg caught her in the ribs, knocking her sideways, and she swung against the impact, knowing where Buffy would go to balance after the hit and springing for her there. She missed her by half an inch, perhaps, and only because Buffy moved quickly to the side; Spike could feel the heat of her body just a breath away and then it was gone. “Like it when I talk dirty to you, don’t you,” she crooned. “Makes you feel like you’re a good girl, and I’m the monster talking you into bed.”

“You _are_ a monster,” Buffy pointed out, and Spike’s mood soured even as she made a grab for her.

“Don’t have to talk much to get you into bed, do I, though,” she replied, voice sharp.

Buffy laughed, although she didn’t sound happy, and Spike finally got a hand on her when she dived to the left, acting on instinct, but the Slayer twisted free. “I’m going to fuck you into the ground, love,” she snarled, turning, ears pricked for the next noise Buffy would make. “Split that sweet cunt open — ”

The Slayer crashed into her from behind, tumbling her onto the bed. “Just _try_ it,” she said impertinently into her ear, holding her shoulders down on the sheets. “You can’t do a damn thing I don’t want.”

“Good thing you want my cock then, isn’t it, Buffy?”

The pressure disappeared from her back, and she rolled over and sat up just in time to see her strap floating through the air. “Guess I do,” whispered Buffy, sending a shiver down Spike’s back.

“You want to fuck me, Slayer?” Spike asked softly, spreading her legs. It wasn’t her usual bag, but she wouldn’t mind, for Buffy.

“No,” Buffy said, dropping the cock on her stomach, and then Spike felt hands on her hips and cool breath between her legs. A hot shock went up her spine.

“Slayer!”

The touch of a tongue to her cunt was gone as soon as it had come. “What,” said Buffy, trying to sound disdainful, but mostly just sounding like an insecure, inexperienced girl. “Don’t you want it?”

Spike gaped. “Just — ” Just hadn’t thought Buffy would want to. Dru never had; it had been decades since the last time she’d begged her to do it. And she hadn’t known Buffy to be with any other women, so she had never really entertained the thought. Girls who started out with men were always so skittish about throwing a little tongue. She put her confident face back on and laid back against the sheets. “Just a pity I can’t see you put your tongue up me, kitten.”

“Tell me you want it.”

“Christ, I want it, love,” Spike said, and then Buffy’s hot little mouth was on her, inexperienced but not unenthusiastic. “I’m going to fuck you blind when you’re done,” she groaned, and could see her skin beginning to bruise under Buffy’s invisible fingers as her tongue went to work. “Just like that, that’s my girl.”

All of a sudden, there were vindictive teeth on her clit. Buffy made a pleased noise when she thrashed, and held her down.

“Buffy, fuck,” she croaked, and then Buffy’s tongue was inside her. “Fuck, love, again.”

She came with Buffy’s teeth against her, tongue inside her, shaking like a fucking leaf, like a virgin even though she’d had her face in more cunts than Buffy had probably ever imagined seeing.

As soon as she could move her legs again, she rolled Buffy over to make good on her promises.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

This was getting out of hand, Buffy thought while Spike pistoned fingers into her and whispered filth into her ear. God, it was, but she couldn’t stop. Spike was fucking her in grave dirt, Buffy on her knees with her hands braced on the gravestone Spike was sitting against, legs wide around Spike’s hips. “ — the Slayer’s a beautiful little slut, I should tell them,” Spike was saying. Buffy now knew that it was second nature for Spike to talk while she fucked. Degrading things, sometimes, awful things, but it turned her on like anything to hear Spike purring about the ways she was going to fuck her into her ear. “Letting me fingerfuck her tight little pussy while she oughta be working. Right here where anyone could see.”

Buffy groaned into Spike’s neck, and rode her fingers harder. “Shut up,” she said desperately, the way she did every time, but Spike just grinned at her and fucked her harder.

“Could get you naked here under the moon, couldn’t I, kitten,” she said. “Naked on all fours with my face buried in your pretty cunt. Do anything I want to you and you’d beg me for it. Because you _belong_ here with me.”

This talk, Buffy liked less, and she showed her displeasure by growling in Spike’s ear, but it only earned her a coo from the vampire, a sucking kiss to the side of her neck that had _better_ not leave a mark. “I’m here because it’s convenient,” she said, because she knew it would hurt Spike.

True to form, the blue eyes, pale under the moonlight, narrowed in irritation. Her fingers drove up so hard into Buffy’s sweet spot that she nearly screamed, caught halfway between pain and something glorious. “ _Convenient_ to get your rocks off with me, hmm?” Spike hissed. “Deny all you want, Slayer. You can’t get enough of me putting my hands in this pretty little hole of yours. All your little holes. _Me_.”

Buffy flushed, and shoved at Spike, who hit the gravestone hard enough to crack the granite, but only smiled ferociously at the pain and stilled her fingers.

“Ride me, love,” she whispered, hoarse with want. “Fuck yourself on me.”

It was blinding how much she wanted Spike, how little she cared about the fact that they were _technically_ in public, how when she lifted herself up and dropped her hips into a grinding roll against the strong base of those thick fingers it stirred her like Riley never had.

“There’s that lovely snatch of yours, gorgeous,” Spike said in her ear, applying her thumb to the job of rubbing Buffy’s clit. Just on the edge of too hard, just exactly where Buffy wanted it, and were those ragged noises coming from her? “Want to be treated rough, don’t you, kitten. Rub you off right, there you are. Gripping me so good.” Her fingers were fisted in the leather coat hanging off Spike’s shoulders as she rode her hand, and when Spike wriggled a pinky up against her ass she fell forwards onto her shoulder, gasping against her neck where no pulse beat. “That’s my good girl,” Spike crooned, and used her free hand to slip up the front of Buffy’s shirt and cup her breast, thumb tweaking her nipple. “That’s my Buffy.”

“Not yours,” Buffy managed, but her legs were still lifting her on and off of Spike’s fingers.

“I scratch your itch, Slayer, you scratch mine,” Spike growled, and bit her throat, teeth still too human to pierce the skin without more pressure. Buffy keened, and Spike caught her around the waist with her free arm to flip her over onto the dirt and begin thrusting with her arm again, thumb slipping so wet across her that it wasn’t enough friction.

“More,” Buffy demanded, still clinging to her coat, and then Spike was ducking down to put her mouth over her fingers and suck hard on her clit until she screamed.

When the vampire raised her glistening face, smiling, Buffy watched her as she shoved her own hand down the front of her pants and brought herself off, wondering where the urge to kiss the fluids off her face had come from.

**☾☾☾**

Every so often after her sixth or seventh orgasm of the night Buffy would fall dead asleep against her, and if Spike hadn’t been so exhausted on the nights she managed to wear out that prodigious Slayer strength she would have enjoyed the warm, heavy head on her breast, Buffy’s little body sprawled out over hers.

What she usually could do was wake up earlier than Buffy, mostly because sleeping at night wasn’t natural for her in any case. Silly girl didn’t sleep hardly enough, so when Spike fucked her to sleep she tended to stay out. Never would stay for breakfast, but she would sleep curled up in Spike’s bed for a little while, dreaming only just enough so you’d notice, her eyes twitching behind her closed lids. In her sleep, she looked younger, and acted it, too. Tucked her face under Spike’s chin, usually, an arm slung over her. Even when Spike was fucking her blind she never felt so needed as when Buffy clung to her in her sleep.

When it had been Dru curled up at her side, deep in well-needed sleep, Spike had always hummed to her, kissed the back of her neck, stroked a hand through her hair or across her skinny body, but if she did any of those things to Buffy, she’d wake and be off in a heartbeat, and if Buffy needed the dirty fuck only Spike was willing to give her, Spike needed these moments afterwards, where Buffy was sweet and quiet and she could pretend she was hers.

This morning when Buffy stirred, though, she didn’t immediately leave, just murmured sleepily, “What time is it?”

“Five, kitten. Go back to sleep.” Buffy hummed and tucked her face back against her throat. If her heart could beat still, it would have hammered out of her chest.

“Spike,” she said after half an hour, body still soft and relaxed in her arms.

“Yeah, love?” She grimaced as soon as she had said it, knowing that that was a surefire way to make Buffy react badly, but it seemed that the Slayer hardly heard her.

“Did you sleep at all last night?”

Spike snorted. “’course I did, Slayer. Couldn’t hardly do anything else, after a shag with you. You wring me clean out.”

“Mm. You’re always awake when I get up.”

“Bit of a kip after sex is all right, but I usually don’t sleep the night. Cigarette helps.”

“You don’t, though,” Buffy pointed out.

“Didn’t think you’d care for the smell, pet,” Spike said, and raised an eyebrow, even knowing Buffy couldn’t see it since she was turned the other way on the bed.

“Why do you care what I care for,” Buffy asked, petulant, which was Spike’s cue to say something foolish like _because I love you, because I want you to be happy, because when you’re in my bed I don’t want you to recall a damn thing but delirious sodding pleasure_ , so that Buffy could reject her and leave.

Instead she reached over to the bedside table and grabbed a fag, stuck it between her lips, and lit up, lying on her back with her right arm still under Buffy’s head.

“Tell me something,” Buffy said, instead of rolling out of bed and leaving.

“Tell you what?”

“Anything,” Buffy replied.

“King Lear’s favorite daughter was Cordelia.”

“I hate you,” Buffy said, but she laughed. “And I _know_ that, we had to read it in the tenth grade.”

So, in between shagging Angel’s soul out and dropping a flaming bloody church organ on her. “Wasn’t under the impression you did much reading in tenth grade.”

“No, but Cordy was insufferable about it at the time.”

“Mm.” Spike took a drag, and Buffy rolled over and stole the cigarette from between her fingers. “Those things’ll kill you,” she said, when Buffy inhaled, and started coughing.

“You only live three times,” Buffy replied, wheezing, and Spike took the cig back and sucked the taste of Buffy’s lips off the end, exhaling a cloud of smoke into her face, mostly to watch her perfect little nose wrinkle. “So far. And I know that too. Try again.”

“That ponce Dracula fed my bloody name to his cute little biographer and ruined it for me. If you count life rights he owes me much fucking more than eleven quid.”

Buffy wrinkled her nose at the mention of Dracula. “I never read it, just saw the movie, but — you mean — ”

“Mina,” Spike sighed. “Drac’s little blood slut, burned by a wafer, names a kid Quincey. You’ll know her as Winona Ryder.”

Buffy started giggling almost helplessly. “ _No_.”

“Bless her, Lucy was probably a sodding transsexual one-eyed nun, for as much truth as was in that book.”

Buffy hadn’t stopped laughing. The embarrassment was worth it to see her look this happy. She got out of bed before Spike’s cigarette had burned down entirely, but she was still occasionally bursting into fits of giggles.

It was, she thought, the only time Buffy had ever left without leaving a wound in her wake. That had to be progress.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

“You were made for this, Slayer,” Spike murmured in her ear, and Buffy felt herself spasm as she sunk down on the dildo, Spike’s bare breasts pressed against her back.

“I was _made_ to kill vampires,” she returned, but found herself breathless with the stretch. If Angel, Riley, and Parker were a representative sample, Spike’s strap-on was a normal size, but it was unyielding, and in this position, it felt _huge_.

“Kitty has claws,” Spike laughed, and bit lightly at Buffy’s earlobe, her hand trailing down Buffy’s stomach to flick at her clit as she bottomed out, drawing a gasp out of her. “ _I_ was made to kill Slayers, but here we are.”

“You were _made_ to keep Drusilla company,” Buffy told her crossly, and this time Spike’s teeth on her earlobe were sharper, and she screwed her hips up into Buffy’s body with a little hint of vindictiveness.

“Made to keep _you_ company,” Spike replied, and Buffy squirmed. “Giddy up, Slayer.”

Buffy started giggling. There was only so much an English accent could do to make a ridiculous phrase sound sexy. Spike joined her in the laugh a few moments later, but then took her by the hips and lifted her, grinding Buffy’s body up and down her prick like she was a doll. Buffy had only so much patience with the slow pace and the lack of fingers on her clit, so she put her legs to work and dropped her hand down between her own legs, where Spike was dragging in and out of her. It prompted a little growl from the vampire behind her, but it was the sort of growl that made her feel hot, rather than the sort that reminded her she was sleeping with the enemy.

“Tell me again,” she whispered, and Spike drove her hips up into her again.

It wasn’t a specific command, but Spike never needed a specific command to figure out what she wanted. “You were made for this, love,” she said, voice smooth and low, and stroked the curves of Buffy’s waist, gentle in counterpoint to the way Buffy was bouncing on her. “Let go the bloody Slaying while you’re with me. You’re just a woman here.”

Buffy could hear that she was leaving out the words _my woman_ , but she could live with that. There was _something_ about fucking Spike, and the fact that the frankly filthy passion was mixed with a strange sort of tenderness was part of it. If Spike got too close to actually _saying_ it, she would object, but as long as Spike was giving her what she needed, she figured she could think whatever thoughts she wanted. As long as Spike didn’t try _telling_ her she loved her, Buffy could even enjoy the hard eye contact, the soft mouth on her throat, the whispered endearments.

“You look like a painting like this, kitten,” Spike continued, purring against the back of her neck. “Can’t think of which artist just now, but I suspect you wouldn’t know them anyway.”

If Buffy weren’t too busy getting off to lie, she would protest that she knew artists, but she probably didn’t know whichever one Spike was talking about, and she didn’t want to interrupt. That thought hooked her uncomfortably, and she pushed through it. “You can’t even see most of me anyway,” she said.

Spike set her teeth against the back of her neck, like she was scruffing a kitten, and then pulled her back against her chest, head tucking over the space between her ear and shoulder. “I can see enough, though, can’t I, Buffy,” she said, hoarse. “Can see your lovely back, can’t I, darling?” She ran her hand up Buffy’s spine, smooth even though their bodies were pressed so closely together there couldn’t be much room. “So strong, you are. Can see your beautiful hair. Looks good cut, too. See these pretty legs — ” and now Buffy’s stride faltered as Spike ran her hands roughly up her inner thighs as they pumped. “Nothing better than being crushed between these, baby. See your gorgeous tits — ”

“They’re a little small,” Buffy said, and knew she was fishing.

Sure enough, Spike growled at her again, and gripped them, making Buffy gasp as she ran her thumbs over the nipples, dry and harsh. “They’re bloody perfect. Second I saw them I wanted to put my face in them. Fucking gorgeous tits. Fucking gorgeous body. Want you so much I can hardly breathe, and — let me do that, love, let me.”

She replaced Buffy’s hand between her legs with her own, and god, Buffy thought, she always knew just how to drive her into a frenzy. Mouth on her throat, two fingers teasing the place where Buffy was split on her prick, her thumb stroking over her clit in a counterpoint to the frantic pace Buffy was setting.

“Love this body,” she said, now panting against the back of Buffy’s neck, “Love fucking this body, love fucking you — love — ”

Buffy shook apart under the circles Spike was drawing into her clit, and ignored the nonsense Spike was muttering into the back of her neck as she lowered her gently onto the bed on her front and withdrew.

**☾☾☾**

Funny thing about Buffy Summers in bed was that she was wild. A little hellcat, really, although from what Angel had said, he had pretty much had her lying back and thinking of England.

Men. Spike rolled her eyes, and rolled up her sleeves in the middle of the Magic Box, to make Buffy look over at her. Worked like a charm. Buffy might be convinced there wasn’t anything emotional between them, but one thing was for sure — Buffy Summers was perfectly queer enough, and Spike got her hot. She could smell it on the air, and besides, Buffy wasn’t looking away from her bared wrists.

Grinning, she undid the fourth button on her shirt. It was already indecently far open — Willow had been sneaking peeks all afternoon — but Buffy’s eyes widened a little when she leaned forward and it gaped. If she hadn’t already been given a no shoes, no shirt, no service decree from Anyanka, she would have shucked the thing entirely. It was funny watching Buffy’s little friends struggle not to be scandalized.

“Woah, Spike, what happened to you?” Xander said, pointing at her arms, where the red marks of the cuffs had yet to fade. “Actually, never mind, I don’t care.”

“Handcuffs!” Anya chirped from behind the counter. Xander grimaced.

“I already regretted asking, An.”

“Slept with a little demon last night,” Spike said, and didn’t look at Buffy, although she could practically feel her blushing behind her. “Gave me a run for my money, all right.”

Willow’s girlfriend — ex-girlfriend? Girlfriend? Who knew — looked at her oddly.

“Ugh, Spike, no one wants to hear it,” said Buffy. Spike turned her head, lazily, to look at her.

“Looking a little pink there, Slayer,” she said. “Am I getting you all hot and bothered?”

“You do look embarrassed,” Anya chipped in. “It’s all right, the idea is arousing to me, too.”

Xander and Buffy choked almost in unison, and Spike started laughing.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

“I’ve never —”

“Well, seems there’s loads of stuff you’ve never,” Spike said, and waggled the vibrator between her fingers. “What, Angelus never gave you a little what-for?”

Buffy glared. “Well, _Angel_ couldn’t — ”

“Couldn’t get his jollies without going all Evil Dead, but he could have given you yours.”

Buffy blinked, and realized that was true. And, admittedly, they’d done a lot of kissing and groping and all. But other than that one night together, neither of them had really — well — _climaxed_. Although sometimes she had felt so close she thought she might cry if he touched her there. “Well, I — ”

“And what about your little toy soldier? ”

“Riley respected me. You don’t. That’s the point.”

Spike got that look on her face that meant she thought Buffy was the stupidest person alive. “I don’t _worship at your bloody altar_ ,” she said, but it sounded like she was lying. “I _do_ respect you. That’s why I’m trying to introduce you to this little beauty. I’m not arrogant enough to think if I pump my cock in you a time or two you’ll come screaming.”

“Angel never went down on me, either,” Buffy said, barely audible, purely because it would wipe that look off of Spike’s face.

Sure enough, the expression softened to something dark and sweet. “Ever stick his tongue up your arse?”

Buffy thought she squeaked at that. “What.”

“No, then,” Spike said, and grinned. “Put his hand in you?”

“Well, parts of — ”

“I mean the whole thing, sweetheart,” Spike said, now back to having a good time scandalizing her. “ _Really_ doubt he ever let you peg him, although I swear to you he loves it.”

Buffy choked, and could feel her face flushing aggressively. “Oh my _god_.”

“Let’s just start with this, though,” Spike continued, blasé, holding up the vibrator again. And, well. Buffy had always been curious. “Tell you what, if I can make you come in under two minutes you’ve got to tell me I’m the best you’ve ever had.”

“You could never,” Buffy said, and then realized that she should have just said _no deal_ when Spike’s smile turned so sharp it could cut her.

Spike didn’t make her say it until she’d come six times, first with the vibrator on her clit and then inside her and then again with her mouth, and after that she’d lost count. Exhausted, she rolled her eyes and said, in the least enthusiastic voice she could, “You’re the best I’ve ever had, Spike.”

“I know,” Spike said, and wrapped an arm around Buffy’s waist while her other hand reached for the pack of cigarettes.

Buffy watched her smoke for a few minutes, and then said, quietly, not sure if she wanted the answer, “So — have you — _pegged_ — Angel?”

Spike looked down at her and raised an eyebrow. “Well, Dru wanted to see it, and it’s not like I was going to let _him_ fuck _me_. All about the ladies, I am.”

The image came to Buffy without her bidding, Angel face down on a mattress somewhere screaming like she did when Spike rode her with that thing. Spike over him, dispassionate with eyes only for Buffy — well, not for Buffy, for Drusilla. For the girl watching her. She flushed.

“Aw, you’re thinking about it,” Spike said. “That’s cute. Don’t ever think about Angelus in my bed again.”

“Shut up,” Buffy told her. “Would _you_ let me?”

The answer was immediate. “If you wanted to.”

“With this?” Buffy asked, picking the black strap-on up off the bedside table.

“Nah, I think I’d get you a different one,” Spike said. “Pink, you think?”

“They make them in pink?”

Spike laughed. “Hell, Slayer, I could get you a wooden one if you wanted to have a little stake play.”

Buffy shuddered. “Ew. Splinters.”

“Lacquer,” Spike countered.

**☾☾☾**

Buffy usually slipped out of bed as soon as she was done, while Spike was lighting up, as long as she didn’t have anything to say and wasn’t so exhausted that she fell asleep immediately. Spike watched her hopping back into her pants, saw the tiredness fall back over her, and wanted to whisk her back into bed. She went from being firey and passionate and open right back into the hardened shell that she had adopted after coming back from the dead.

“Buffy,” she said, and Buffy turned back to look at her even as she was searching around on the floor for her top. Her green eyes weren’t sparkling anymore, but they weren’t as drawn as they had been when she had turned up.

“Yeah?”

“Shirt’s upstairs, I took it off you just before we came down.”

“Oh.” Buffy started struggling into her bra instead, arms still loose and relaxed, and Spike got up out of the bed to do it up for her, cigarette left smoldering in the ashtray by the bed. “Thanks.”

“No skin off my nose,” Spike said, and kissed her on the back of the neck before she let her go, even though it made Buffy turn and look at her with her nose wrinkled. No harm in doing it, since she was leaving anyway. “Patrolling any, or heading home?”

“Home.”

“Let me walk you.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Even if I did need a knight in shining armor, I wouldn’t pick you.”

That stung, but Spike shook it off, tugging on her jeans and pulling a black shirt over her head. “Get a bit of exercise.”

“You just got, like, so much exercise,” Buffy said, climbing the ladder. “Where’s my shirt?”

“Check to the left,” Spike called up, and tucked her pack of cigs into her jeans pocket before she followed. “Want a drink?”

“No, I’ve got to get home,” Buffy said, not looking at her as she struggled into her shirt.

“Fair enough,” Spike replied, and they walked most of the way to Revello Drive in silence.

As they turned onto the street, Buffy said, quietly, “Thanks.”

“Thanks for what, love?”

“Don’t call me that,” Buffy told her peevishly. “I mean, for just walking with me.”

Spike flicked the butt of her cigarette onto the sidewalk and fell a few steps behind while she ground it out. “My pleasure.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes,” Buffy said, narrowing her eyes at her. “Why are you doing this?”

Spike snorted. What, was this a way to make a clean break of it? “Oh, pet, you don’t want me to say the answer to that.”

“Tell me how you felt about Drusilla,” she said, and Spike blinked, feeling slightly as if she’d gotten whiplash.

“I loved her,” she said simply, after a moment. “Would’ve done anything for her. Sacrificed anything. Let her hurt me any way she liked. Spent a century taking care of her, didn’t I, the poor nutty darling.”

“When did you stop?”

Spike paused, and lit another cigarette as they stood at the drive of Buffy’s house. “Not really sure I did. Only there’s just something more important to me now. Not really sure when that happened. Suppose whenever that was, that was when it was.”

“And what happens when you find something more important than me?”

Buffy seemed to want this from her, sometimes. To rake herself over the coals, open up her heart, even though she rejected it every time Spike held it out to her. She gritted her teeth and sighed, and then told her, “Slayer, you’re the Chosen Girl who’s got to fight the forces of evil. As the forces of evil myself, there’s not going to be anything more important to me than you.”

Buffy didn’t say anything, she just walked into the house.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

“Got something for you, Slayer,” Spike said, when Buffy turned up in the graveyard. “Whenever you’re done with patrol.”

“Don’t say it’s your cock,” Buffy said, and Spike laughed, like she’d never expected Buffy to say the word outside of the crypt. She looked remarkably human while laughing, the same way she acted remarkably human in general, when she wasn't busily behaving like an absolute pig.

“Yours, actually,” she told her.

Buffy blinked, and then felt her mouth fall open a little. “I wasn’t _serious_!”

Spike smirked, and didn’t say anything. The silence was heavy, and Buffy found herself desperately wishing that demons would attack them.

“God,” she said, “Where’s a vampire when you need one?”

“Right here, love,” Spike said.

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Shut up.”

It took about twenty minutes to find one, but eventually they stumbled on a little knot of vampires sitting around smoking what smelled like weed. Spike walked up to them and nicked the blunt, and took a hit. “What’s the news, lads?”

Buffy staked the first one that tried to answer. Spike kicked the second one to the ground, and tossed the weed. They didn’t put up much of a fight, relatively to some she’d met, and Spike was playing with them instead of killing any of them, occasionally throwing her one to stake when she was done hitting them around. This gave Buffy a few free seconds to observe her at work, coat swirling, limbs powerful and precise, face wild with battle-joy.

If she weren’t a soulless creature of the night, Buffy thought, she would be kind of dreamy, in a sort of bad-boy punk-rock way. She hadn’t told Willow about Spike, hadn’t told her there was a woman at all, because then she would have to say who it was, but she wondered if this was normal, getting so turned on just from looking at someone. Not that Tara was anything like Spike. _Sorry, Tara_.

When they were alone in the graveyard again, Spike turned to her, beaming, and Buffy launched herself, shoving her down onto the ground and kissing her hard.

“I’m ready for my present now,” she said, when Spike rolled her over and pinned her to the ground, wriggling her way between her legs.

“Thought you weren’t serious,” Spike said, and ripped open the button on her jeans, putting her face in the vee of fabric and inhaling in a way that should have grossed Buffy out, but which made her faint with arousal instead.

“I said I _wasn’t_ ,” Buffy told her, and hooked her knees over Spike’s shoulders.

“Well, make up your mind, Slayer,” Spike said, and then tore down her trousers.

Buffy made up her mind after that that they weren’t getting any further than the Simmons tomb tonight.

**☾☾☾**

Buffy had more or less laughed her head off when Spike had finally presented her with a polished wood strap-on, and then Spike had started laughing at the sight of her with it in her hand, looking more or less like a fairly obscene stake. It was, disgustingly, one of the nicest moments Spike could remember the two of them having. Buffy had fairly cried every time she had looked at it, which meant that the first time Spike had been fucked in several decades was both fucking terrible and a hell of a lot of fun. Buffy kept collapsing on her in laughter at the sight of it, and finally had given up and gone down on her, except she kept giggling intermittently through that, too.

Spike had snapped after about the third time she’d been close when Buffy had started laughing again, and hauled Buffy’s body up to sit on her face while she brought herself off.

“That _completely_ ruined the mood,” she said, somewhat disgruntled, but Buffy, who was holding the thing again and giggling into her chest, shook her head, and her smooth, thick hair trailed over Spike’s neck in a sort of soothing tickle.

“I’ve _never_ had that much fun in bed,” she said, and gripped it like a stake, miming taking Spike out with it.

Spike mimed falling back onto the pillow at the blow, and decided to take it as a compliment. “Ought to get you presents more often, I s’ppose.”

Buffy stopped laughing, and Spike kicked herself for saying it. Any hint of mention of a future and Buffy fled, unless she was mid-orgasm.

But Buffy didn’t go. Instead she held up the dildo again, and looked up, somewhat sheepishly. “Sorry I wasn’t any good,” she said, and put it down. “Just — I can’t look at it without making a staking joke.”

“You’re always good, kitten,” Spike said, which was both a lie and not a lie, depending on how you meant the word ‘good’. The sex had been some of the worst Spike had ever had, in terms of pleasure, but it had been nice to see Buffy have herself a good time. “Just get the jokes out of your system. Roleplay a bit.”

Buffy started giggling again, and said, in a girly, high-pitched voice, “I’m the _Slayer_. I’m going to slay a big, bad, evil vampire.” Flattering, Spike thought, but she was joking, which was not so flattering. “With my _dick_.”

Spike started laughing too, at that. She picked the dildo up off the bed and tossed it at the wall, reaching down to kiss Buffy again.

“Hey!” Buffy said, and rolled out of bed to get it. “Easy with that!”

“Yeah, love, stand just like that,” Spike told her when she bent over to pick it up, plastering a leer onto her face. Buffy wrinkled her nose at her and turned back around.

“Don’t be a pig, Spike.”

“I just put my tongue inside you, Buffy, looking at your arse is kid stuff.”

“Keep _this_ ,” Buffy said, and dropped the dildo back on her chest before she started to get dressed. “Who knows when I’ll need a good laugh?”

**✧** **✧** **✧**

“So when did you start dressing like this?” Buffy asked, tugging on Spike’s duster.

“Seventies,” Spike replied, and kept walking. “Told you that already.”

“I meant the whole — thing,” Buffy said, hurrying to keep up. “Not the jacket.”

“Sixties was when I started bleaching.”

“And the whole — butch thing?”

“Passed as a man for about forty good years after my mum died, but I waited until she went to start wearing trousers.”

Buffy blinked. “Why?”

“It was the Victorian Era, pet, nice ladies wore big bloody skirts and corsets.”

“I can’t imagine you ever being a nice lady,” Buffy said, and ignored the way Spike looked at her after that, unfathomable but not insulted.

“Never was, but she didn’t have to know that.”

That was so peculiar. “So she died before you turned?”

“No, after.”

Buffy blinked again, now feeling foolish. “But — ”

“Didn’t I go batshit bloody bonkers and murder all my family members and turn into their living nightmare? No, that’s just your ex, love. I visited my mum about once a month from the time I turned until the time she died. Christmas presents and faking being a proper lady and all.”

She bristled at the slight to Angel, even though she was beyond used to Spike slighting Angel. Slighting him about the fact that he contained Angelus was still something that hit a little close to home, particularly when Spike herself was as soulless as Angelus ever had been.

“Anyway,” Spike said, cutting her off before she could object, “Suits in the twenties were high-waisted and all, single-breasted, so it was a bit harder to hide my shape. Stopped bothering. Grew my hair out for a while. Gave it all the chop again in the forties. Then got into the garage rock scene.”

Buffy snorted. “And decided you wanted to look like Billy Idol?”

“Met Billy Idol once,” Spike said. “Maybe he decided to look like me.”

**☾☾☾**

The door to the crypt was ajar when Spike got back from her patrol at the end of the night. Buffy had wanted to catch some sleep — long shift — and she had volunteered to make the rounds, since she would be up anyhow.

There was something wrong. The hair on her neck stood up, and she eased through the door, silent as a cat. She sniffed the air.

It smelled like home, not much out of the ordinary. No strange scents, anyway. One was a little more prominent than usual. Spike glided forwards into the crypt, casting about for the intruder. Maybe Dawn had come and gone and not closed the door. Or one of Buffy’s little friends; try as she might, Xander came in looking for her enough that she could never entirely get his scent out of the entry.

The crypt door swung shut behind her, and the room fell into darkness. Spike whirled, snarling, into game face, and the sound shook through the stone. In the darkness near the door there was a motion, and Spike lunged forwards only to have the shape slip through her fingers, tripping her to the ground on the way through. Springing up from the ground, Spike realized there was a light coming from her bedroom below, and silhouetted in front of that light now was the petite figure of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“Slayer,” she said, but it came out as a hiss through her teeth.

She put them away with some effort, but this time Buffy lunged for her, knocking her to the ground again. “What happened to always having your weapons,” she taunted, and Spike remembered that long-ago conversation. “I took your advice, and I’ve got mine.”

Something poked Spike in the sternum, and with a cold feeling, she realized it was wood. Game face took over again, and Spike tossed the Slayer off of her and retreated into the shadows, skirting the room. Buffy’s shape followed her unerringly; she might not be able to see a damn thing in this lighting, not as well as Spike could, but she had that freaky Slayer sense. “Haven’t killed anyone you care about, lately,” Spike reminded her. “Still chipped.”

Buffy laughed. “I’m the _Slayer_ , Spike,” she said, voice so chill it sent a ripple down Spike’s spine. “I don’t need a reason to kill a vampire.”

That wasn’t right. Buffy wouldn’t — Spike paused, and then focused on the shape in Buffy’s hand.

Well.

She did her level best not to laugh, putting her game face away again and slipping back into the part of bemused vampire. “Figured my service had earned me a stay,” she bargained smoothly, crossing the crypt by memory in the darkness, keeping her eyes fixed on Buffy’s shadow. The way the light was playing with her, she looked more intimidating than she usually did; taller and more mysterious. Spike was used to reading her by her expression, which was invisible in the dark, even to her enhanced eyes. “Kind of you to do it in the dark, give me an advantage.”

“I don’t need my eyes to kill you,” Buffy told her, voice still flat and deadly.

There was no way she knew how much her Slayer voice turned Spike on, was there?

Spike had killed two Slayers. If Buffy wanted her little game, she’d have to work for it, no matter how much Spike was technically ready to just go arse up for her. Swiftly, she swept around the room to come at Buffy from the back, a strike Buffy met with one arm and staggered under before she kicked Spike in the stomach and tossed her back into the wall.

“Hope you’re wearing nice panties, Slayer,” she said, as she got back up and returned to circling. “Looking forward to seeing them.”

“My granny always did tell me to wear clean ones in case I die,” Buffy replied cheerfully. "But I think that's your job tonight."

Spike snarled at her, and then they were tumbling backwards over the tomb and onto the cold floor, Spike’s hand the only thing keeping Buffy’s head from striking it as they rolled. She took the opportunity to get Buffy by the hair and bring her teeth a breath from her neck. “Gotcha, Slayer,” she murmured, but a poke to her chest kept her from biting down.

“Gotcha, Spike,” Buffy echoed, and then, with a twist of her body, slammed her backwards onto the floor, the strap-on still pressed against Spike’s chest. “You vamps are all the same,” she said, a little breathless with exertion as they tussled, Spike’s vampire strength not _quite_ a match for Buffy’s, but almost. “A little bite and then you’re done. Where’s the foreplay?”

“I’ll show you foreplay,” Spike told her, although, to be honest, she didn’t need it. Would hardly even need fingers, with how Buffy’s body fit against hers in a fight, with how hot that low, dangerous voice was, how gorgeous she was in full Slayer mode. She tossed Buffy over her head and scrambled up, whirling around just in time to catch Buffy coming right back at her.

They went to the floor again, Buffy coming up on top. “Dead twice now,” she chirped.

“Makes us even,” Spike said, and Buffy snorted, breaking character for a moment.

They almost fell downstairs when Spike gained the upper hand again, and Buffy squeaked as she started to drop before Spike gave up the advantage to whisk her away from the edge. The Slayer wasn’t in such a chivalrous mood, apparently, and used the opportunity to get back on top.

“Want to make it three?” Buffy asked.

“Is that a stake or are you just happy to see me, Slayer?” Spike reached up and crushed their mouths together, and Buffy’s body, battle-hard, went liquid against her. She spread her legs to let Buffy settle between them as the kiss went on, Buffy held up over her with Spike’s hands cupping her face.

“Hey,” Buffy said, when the kiss broke. “No bumpies.”

Spike looked at her like she was insane. “Do you _want_ — ”

“No!” Buffy exclaimed, quickly, but kissed her again as if trying to shut her up. Spike decided to just let that one go for now, and let Buffy pin down her wrists over her head with one hand.

“C’mon, Slayer, fuck me,” she demanded, and Buffy whimpered, the sort of sound that she usually made when Spike went down on her after she fucked her, licking into her sore cunt. “Slayer — ”

“Keep your hands there or I’ll dust you.” Buffy loosed her wrists so that she could tug down Spike’s jeans. Being as helpful as she could without her hands, Spike lifted her hips and helped her kick them off all the way. She was wet already, but usually before she started paying attention to herself she had been at Buffy for a while, and she was much closer to desperate. This was basically just her getting revved up. “You like this, don’t you?” Buffy said, when she stroked her fingers against the seam of Spike’s cunt. “Being at my mercy.”

“Please, I could still kill you — ”

Buffy shoved two fingers into her, and Spike stopped talking. “All high and mighty about my death wish,” Buffy continued, “And how I belong in the dark with you, but I think that’s just projecting.”

“ _Buffy_.”

“Beg me,” Buffy said, and the tone of her voice as she worked her fingers was electrifying, cool and commanding. Slayer Voice. Spike felt her resolve crumble like that bloody warehouse.

“Goddamn you, Slayer,” she snarled, “Goddamn you, give it to me.”

“Ask nicely,” Buffy sang.

“You goddamn sadist bitch — ”

Buffy twisted her fingers, and rubbed at her clit. “ _That’s_ not nice.”

“Fuck me, Slayer.” That wasn’t good enough. Wouldn’t be, anyway. It was a good thing Spike didn’t have a shred of pride left in her body when Buffy was in bed with her. “Fuck me, please, Buffy.”

“Good,” Buffy said, and then the slick head of the thing was at her entrance, held in Buffy’s hand rather than strapped across her hips. “Spread ‘em.”

“What, do you want me to do the bloody splits?”

The head dipped into her, and Spike breathed out like she had been punched. It took Buffy a moment to find the angle, but when it had slid in, she remembered how to drive it in again, slowly at first and then speeding the movement of her arm, body still shadowy in the low light.

“Christ, love, just like that,” she panted, and reached for her clit, but Buffy slapped her hand away. “Give it to me harder, Slayer. I can take your sodding stake.”

The next thrust pushed her up the floor a bit, and dragged a strangled noise out of her.

“Yes, yes, _yes_ ,” she chanted, fingers clawing across the floor. “Put your fucking shoulder into it, kitten, give it to me just like that. You’re so good, baby.”

“Shut up, vampire,” Buffy said, in that cold Slayer voice again, and Spike couldn’t hold back her moan at that.

“Slayer, _Slayer_ — ”

“What’s my name, Spike?”

“Buffy, Buffy, goddamn you. Suck me, _please,_ love. Suck me.”

She came shuddering around the length of wood, Buffy’s mouth open and hot against her clit. For someone who hadn’t slept with another woman before Spike, she had gotten remarkably good with that mouth of hers, keeping her tongue moving until Spike pushed her head away.

“I was planning to make it to the bed,” Buffy said, after they had been silent for a while.

Spike stretched on the concrete, back arching. “Eh, we never make it there for the first round.”

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Buffy wasn’t asleep anymore, but she kept her eyes closed because Spike was stroking her finger up and down her spine, and it was… kind of nice. But if she acknowledged that she was awake, she would have to leave, because Dawn had school, and she wasn’t supposed to be here, anyway.

“Shame I can’t ever see you in the sunlight,” Spike murmured, and Buffy struggled not to feel guilt at deceiving her, or at the fact that she was using her for sex when Spike — as impossible as it was — was convinced she was in love. “Hair like this was made for sunlight. Body like this was. Thought that the first time I saw you, Slayer, you know. You smelled like sunshine.”

Well, just what the hell did sunshine smell like, Buffy thought, brow wrinkling, not that Spike could see it from behind her. Sweat? Hot grass? What the hell sort of description was that?

“Fought like a dervish. Fuck like a wildcat. Think only thing better than killing a Slayer is fucking you.”

Buffy shivered at that, feeling disgusted, and Spike chuckled and pressed her mouth into the back of her neck.

“I know you’re awake, Slayer,” she purred. “Could tell when your breathing sped. But you stay there as long as you want. Wouldn’t be so foolish as to kick you out of my bed.”

Instead of pointing out that that wasn’t true at all, since she’d been quite unceremoniously kicked out after Xander had interrupted them that one time, Buffy just lay still and let Spike drop an arm around her waist.

“Can’t get enough of you, Slayer,” Spike said. “Even when you bloody well piss me off. Putting on airs, pretending you don’t want me. Love’s bitch, remember I told you that?”

“My bitch,” Buffy suggested, hoping it would get a laugh, but Spike just shrugged.

“Same thing.”

At that, Buffy tugged out of her arms and got out of bed. When she looked back, Spike was looking at her with empty eyes. Or, well, not empty. Angelus’ eyes had been empty. Spike’s were just — blank.

“Run on home to the Bit, Slayer,” Spike said. “You’ll be back.”

Buffy knew as she was hurriedly throwing on her sweater that it was true, and knew just as surely that she would feel this same sickening guilt afterwards.

**☾☾☾**

She'd given up trying to make Buffy see this as any more than a quick fuck, figuring she’d come around on her own, or she wouldn’t, but she wouldn’t be able to quit.

Because Buffy was addicted to this, whatever it was she was getting out of it. Orgasms, yeah, sure, but Buffy could find those alone in bed if she wanted to, or with any bloke or bird who looked at her long enough. She didn’t think she was flattering herself much to say she was the best Buffy had ever had, but even really _great_ sex wasn’t irreplaceable. Some of the other options were better (a distraction from being alive) and some were worse (wanted someone, anyone, to love her unconditionally without expecting anything from her, thought she had to fuck Spike to get it from her). But they were all shit options, because the reason Spike was addicted because it was _Buffy_ , and Buffy’s reason was certainly not _because it was Spike_.

It ate at her, sometimes, not having all of Buffy. Not really even having part of her, except her body, which she had cared more about before she’d died, and now treated like a tool to be used. Buffy was relaxed around her, but the reason for that, Spike knew — had always known — was that she didn’t give a good goddamn what Spike thought of her, and so she didn’t have to pretend anything.

Still, it was almost worth it, having Buffy in her bed. She was so bloody warm. So bloody beautiful. And she kept coming back. Always in some sort of mood, in some sort of tizzy, imperious and lovely and wanting Spike to fuck her out of it.

 _Not going to LA, are you, pet_ , she sometimes thought, violently. _Not going to Angelus. Not going to one of those faceless shitheads at that bloody club. They can’t give you what you need, don’t know you so well as I do. C’mere, darling, I’ll always give you just what you asked for_.

There wasn’t much she kept under wraps, verbally, when she was having a shag, but this — most of the jealousy, most of the love — she did, because Buffy cringed at it. Reminders that it was there, she loved: Spike’s teeth in her neck, her hands tied down on the bed, Spike whispering in her ear how she could fuck her forever. But god forbid she actually dare to say something true. Buffy was only interested in hiding from that.

“Bra’s trashed, love,” she said, picking it up off the floor as Buffy was scrambling around trying to collect her clothing. “Still say you ought to get front-fastening.”

“Ugh, whatever,” Buffy said, peevish, and skedaddled, abandoning it.

The bra was fine. The back clasp was a little torn, but nothing a stitch or two wouldn’t fix. Spike held it while the door of the crypt slammed closed, and then tucked it away with the others.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

It needed to end, as surely as Willow’s using magic as a crutch did, Buffy thought. It needed to end, because it was killing her. The sex was good — so good. Mindlbowingly good. Wowza good. For a few hours at a time Spike could just take everything away, leave her responsibility-less, Slayer-null, just a woman having sex with another woman.

But afterwards — the guilt —

Vampires couldn’t love. Vampires didn’t have souls. These were true things. Except that while Angel and Giles had always sort of explained it as a demon taking over the body of a person, Spike was very clearly both a demon and a person. And, when she really thought about it, so were a lot of other vampires. They were driven by primal things — blood, sex, violence — but they still laughed. They could hold back. Spike did stupid human things, like breathing and eating pizza with garlic on it even though it made her sick, like snoring while she slept and getting embarrassed by things she had said while drunk. Lots of vampires did stupid human things. Buffy had once walked by a vampire mowing his lawn at night, and what was the point of that other than annoying your neighbors and keeping the HOA happy?

The demon was there, obviously. Spike loved bloodshed so much that it was borderline disturbing — well, no, it _was_ disturbing — and was weird and obsessive and didn’t seem to grasp the idea that crime was wrong.

But.

Buffy was pretty sure Spike wasn’t lying when she said she was in love with her. She was pretty sure Spike was capable of that. And that, therefore, Angel probably had been too, and had just never really known how without a soul.

And the thing about sleeping with someone who loved you because they were conveniently available and a good fuck was that it was messed up. Capital M-U. Messed Up. It wasn’t any different than what Parker had done to her, except that Buffy had never loved Parker, not the way Spike loved her, which actually meant that she was _worse_ than Parker.

The more she saw Spike as a person — a person who kept her promises, protected the people who were hers, always knew just what to say when Buffy’s chest felt hollow — the worse sleeping together made her feel.

So it had to be over. It should never have started. Why the hell had Spike let her get this started?

Except she knew the answer to that one. She’d just never let Spike say it without jumping down her throat.

It had to be over.

**☾☾☾**

“This is worse. This is you telling me — ”

“It’s over.”

Spike’s fist clenched, without meaning to move at all. Fury came up through her system, and there she was lost, for a moment, for what to say. There was _something_ there. There _was_ something. Spike hadn’t imagined it. Buffy had had a good time with her. Enjoyed her company, enjoyed their love-making, even if she’d called it fucking. Buffy had kept coming back, had kept keeping her company, even if they hadn’t had many conversations inside the crypt that weren’t handled with liberal application of tongue.

God, she needed a bloody drink or seven.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Spike wasn’t taking it well.

Well, that was an understatement. Of _course_ Spike wasn’t taking it well, Buffy thought, she’d taken Buffy’s first rejection with a good old-fashioned kidnapping/I’ll feed you to my hellbitch ex combo. It was beyond worse, now that Buffy had given her a taste — or a dozen — of having her; those icy eyes followed her around rooms with fury now, and her tongue had sharpened to the point where she was pretty sure Xander had almost cried the last time she had unleashed on him. Worst of all, she wasn’t doing any sort of crazy kidnapping/feed-me-to-your-hellbitch-ex bits, which meant that the wound was just festering. Buffy wasn’t sure she was ever going to forgive herself for actually missing the times when Spike would kidnap her to express her feelings.

She didn’t anticipate, maybe, how not-well Spike was taking it.

**☾☾☾**

Spike tried to be happy that Buffy was jealous over Anya, but instead the chill blankness on her face was making her feel oddly guilty. God damn it, she thought, and just averted her eyes. Bloody fucking soullessness didn’t save her from hating to hurt the women she loved, even if what she felt wasn’t precisely _remorse_. She’d always felt badly when she made Dru cry, too, even though Dru didn’t give her the same courtesy.

She was piss drunk and hoped, for a moment, that Buffy would just stake her and end it. But Buffy, always fucking merciful, didn’t.

Back at the crypt, she lay in the fucking sarcophagus with another bottle of whiskey and stared at the ceiling in the dark. Her fingers still smelled like Anya’s pussy, and her mouth tasted like booze and ashes, and Buffy didn’t come, because of course she didn’t. Spike didn’t really want her to, wanted to just lay here and drink and be pathetic by herself.

She hit her fist into the side of the sarcophagus with a blow that shattered stone, and let loose a growl that ripped through her throat, all furious master vampire. What the fuck did Buffy care, anyhow? What the fuck did she care, when she had made it so blisteringly fucking obvious that she didn’t _want_ to want Spike? “Other people want a fucking piece of me, Slayer,” she snarled to the empty room. “Don’t need to turn them all down and mope around for you, you dizzy bitch.”

It didn’t help, mostly because she _was_ moping around for Buffy.

At least before Buffy had kissed her she’d been able to sleep around without thinking there was something better out there. She loved the Slayer, maybe, but Buffy had made it perfectly clear that she would rather kiss the bottom of Angelus’ bloody shoe than Spike. So she was free to do whatever she wanted without _comparing_.

Anya had come out fine in the comparison — she was refreshingly straightforward — but she wasn’t Buffy. Didn’t squeeze so tight, didn’t hit so hard. Didn’t scream. She knew what she wanted, but there was none of that wild passion.

Bloody fuck, she was in love. It wasn’t like she hadn’t already known it, but it was hitting now harder than it had for a while. That she was in love, and Buffy had fucking well gone and left, because _she_ wasn’t.

The last time she’d been in unrequited love with someone she’d been human, unless you counted those months of her relationship with Dru falling apart. ‘course, she’d been used to the rejection then. Most women weren’t available for other women, and you didn’t ask the ones you weren’t sure about. She’d been too timid, anyhow. Cecily had been the first one she’d really come out and said anything to, and it’d taken months of screwing herself up to do it. And it had hurt, yes. Badly, but not for long, because then there had been Dru, and Spike had thought — well. _This_ is love, and Cecily was just a crush. With a little more perspective, these days, she thought that was just the difference between having a soul and not having one.

Souled love shied from uncertainty, and got distracted by imperfection. All those pesky insecurities and bloody inhibitions got in the way, if you let them. Unsouled — Spike had never loved anyone so hard as she had loved Drusilla, hadn’t known she could until Buffy came along. There was none of that pussyfooting, there was just the chasm of id, of want. Obsessive want, want that didn’t particularly care if things were perfect or certain, want that would take the risk.

And sometimes, like with Dru, and Cecily, and Buffy, the risk didn’t pay off, and you fell into that chasm, and it hurt like a bitch. Christ, how pathetic was she, that the only woman she’d ever managed to keep was off her nut and only halfway loved her back anyway? What the fuck was wrong with her?

She knew she was crying, but there was fuck-all to be done about that.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

“You were going to use a _spell_ on me?”

Of course she had been. Of course. She’d tried to use one on Drusilla. Why would Buffy be any different? Still, the thought of it was devastating. How could Spike claim to love her and be happy with the idea of a her who was only in love because of some magic?

The same way she could be happy with a robot, her rational brain reminded her.

But why did it hurt so much, to know it?

And why was Spike looking so hurt, now, too?

“It wasn’t for _you_. _I_ wanted something. Anything to make these feelings — I just wanted it to stop.”

The relief was immediate, and immense. Buffy could feel the anger slacken off her face. “Spike — ”

“Why can’t you just admit you love me?”

“How many times do I have to — ” Buffy made a little growling noise. “I have feelings for you. I do. But they’re not love. I could never trust you enough for that.”

“Oh, bullshit, Slayer.” Spike threw up her hands, and turned away. “Fucking — you want a shag, you come to me. You want help, you come to me. You want a little peace, you come to me. You come back from the grave, and suddenly you’re always over at my bloody place, in my bloody bed. You sleep next to me, you let me babysit your precious little sister, and you’re going to say you don’t _trust_ me?”

“You don’t have a _soul_ — ”

“Soul, soul, sodding _soul_.” Spike was nearly snarling it, halfway to looking frightening, if Buffy was the sort of girl who was easily frightened. “Who gives a shit about souls?”

“I do!”

“Oh, you want me to be like _Angel_? Psychologically torture a load of gypsies into shoving one into me sideways?” Spike snapped. The bathroom began to seem too small for the two of them. “Suppose I could, but it seems like a drag. Cracking open a few rats every night and writing poetry in my bloody diary about how sad I am. Throwing you over because I can’t take having to live with my own right hand.”

“Shut up,” Buffy hissed, and moved towards the door, but Spike was blocking her way. “Get out of my way.”

“Buffy,” Spike said, and her eyes were dark. “You just bloody well admitted you had feelings for me. You say they’re not love. I say the hell with it. The hell with love, just give me a chance.”

“You _slept_ with my _friend_ ,” Buffy said, and shoved past her.

Spike grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to look in her eyes. “Just a chance, love. Just give me a chance. Hell, just _think_ about giving me a chance.”

“Fine. I’ll think about it. Okay, I’ve thought about — ”

“God _damn_ it,” Spike roared, and Buffy was alarmed to feel herself step back, out of Spike’s hands, not shaky, but nervous. As soon as she had done it, and had taken in a deep breath, Spike’s face softened from the angry, nearly unrecognizable mask it had turned into. Her voice was quieter this time. “Buffy, god damn it. What do I have to do to make you see?”

“You — ”

Spike dropped to her knees instead, and gripped the edges of her bathrobe, as if pleading. “Buffy, _please_.” Buffy stepped back again, astonished, and hit the edge of the sink. “This could be love, Buffy. _Great love_. Please give it a chance to be.”

Buffy felt herself wavering, and instead, steeled her jaw. "Get out of my bathroom," she enunciated clearly. “And get out of my house, and leave me alone. And I _mean_ that. And I will come to you _if_ I want to talk about this. I don’t want to see you before that, which means I don’t want to see you at all if I don’t come.”

Spike’s eyes were burning into hers, and for a moment Buffy considered disinviting her from her house, or maybe just throwing her out the window to make her point. Then she stood, and nodded curtly, and disappeared out of the door.

Being naked was suddenly unappealing. Buffy turned off the shower.

**☾☾☾**

It was nearly three weeks before Buffy turned up, and it had taken every ounce of restraint that Spike had in her body not to go bother her before that. She’d been telling herself it was a test. Just a test. Like the bloody Greek maidens had given to their suitors. Atalanta and her race, and all Spike had to do was endure and beat her. It wasn’t that she didn’t cheat — she went by to have movie night with Dawn while Buffy was at work, and made certain the front porch would smell like cigarette smoke, “accidentally” left her coat on the couch for Buffy to see. Little things to remind Buffy of her — but Buffy didn’t see hide or hair of her, she made sure of that, scrambling for the door as soon as she heard her key in the lock.

It was nearly three weeks, and then there was a knock at the crypt door at five o’clock in the morning. Spike opened it shirtless, having figured it was one of her mates rather than the Slayer, given that Buffy never knocked, and Buffy said, “Oh my god, why don’t you ever wear clothes,” and turned firmly around, averting her pretty green eyes like she hadn’t seen it before.

“Puritan,” Spike grumbled, but she was feeling too elated to carry it off with the appropriate tone. “What’ll it be, Slayer? Whiskey? Shag? Help holding something while you punch it?”

“I thought we had better talk,” Buffy said awkwardly, and didn’t turn around.

“Well, as much as I’m enjoying the sight of the back of you, it’d be easier if you’d look at me.”

“Put on a shirt.”

“Fuck’s sake.” Spike turned away from the door and pulled on the first thing she saw, which was her duster. “There, princess. You happy?”

Buffy turned around. She looked thinner, and pale, and hollow-cheeked, the way she had since she’d come back and found herself having to live in the world again. “Fine,” she said, primly, and then stepped inside. “I’m not going to give _this_ a chance,” she pronounced, and Spike wondered if she’d come here just to say that, just to rub it in.

“Fantastic,” she said, acidly. “Great to hear it. Why’re you here, Buffy?”

“I’m going to give _you_ a chance.”

Spike blinked. “D’you want to explain the difference?”

“I’m not going to start sleeping with you again,” Buffy said, and gestured around. “We’re not going to, to pretend that was all right.”

“It was fine — better than —” Spike protested, but Buffy waved her quiet.

“Let’s, um, table everything, that’s what I mean.”

“Slayer,” Spike said, warningly.

“I mean let’s start over. No — history. I don’t mean forget everything, just — no more who owes who what, who did what to who. No more score. And _no_ more bugging me about how I really love you and just don’t know yet, or I’ll hit you.”

Spike rolled her eyes. “Fine.” Then she stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m Spike.”

“Ugh, I hate you,” Buffy said, and batted it away.

Spike grinned, flashing her teeth in that way that Buffy always looked away from. “No, you don’t.”

“Patrol tonight?”

“It’s a date.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes. “No, it’s not.”

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Spike turned up regularly on patrols, and was playing it remarkably cool. But it wasn’t the respite it had been once, because Buffy was hyperaware of what Spike was thinking, now. Fighting, that was the best — the two of them moving seamlessly, tossing stakes back and forth, pummeling demons. But otherwise, it mostly felt like a neverending first date, and Buffy was starting to think that starting over had actually been a terrible idea.

“D’you know, Slayer, I bet you’d be a half-decent dancer,” Spike told her, sitting on top of a tomb where she had been watching Buffy get pummeled and blowing a smoke ring.

“I dance just fine,” Buffy groused, picking herself up off the ground and brushing the vamp dust off her.

“Sort of dancing they do nowadays is just vertical fucking, love, of course you’re dynamite at it,” Spike said. “I mean actual dancing.”

Buffy tried to pretend that didn’t make her feel a little warm, even though Spike apparently barely knew how to give a non-sexual compliment. “You’ve _literally_ never sounded older.”

“Give me a tic and I’ll put on a posher accent.”

The laugh that burst out of her chest surprised her, and Spike responded with a grin.

**☾☾☾**

Slayer was missing her in her bed, Spike thought. She was. Had to be. When she had been by Revello Drive, she noticed the cigarette butts on the front walk had been swept up, and she grinned. When Buffy was patrolling alone and Dawn was at Janice’s, she occasionally dropped in to walk through the Summers house.

Being soulless didn’t mean not knowing the difference between right and wrong so much as it meant you didn’t have any inherent sense of it. Slayer would get right brassed off if she knew Spike had looked through her closet, but there wasn’t really any conscience for the fact to twinge at. Behind the dull sensible colors that Buffy had taken to wearing, the old clothes were hiding, bright and cheery and hysterically impractical. Spike could recall the first time she’d seen the girl, the tiny tops and tinier skirts she had worn back then. It brought a smile to her face, but mostly for the nostalgia of it. Things had been simpler then. Love Dru. Cause trouble. Kill the Slayer, no matter how beautiful her legs were.

In the drawer beside Buffy’s bed she found a little black vibrator, just like the one she’d used. Come to think — she didn’t often use the thing herself, but she remembered that it had almost stopped working once when Buffy had clamped down around it. Holding it up to the lamplight, she saw the plastic was a little deformed, just there at the base.

 _Oh, Slayer muscles_ , she thought dreamily, and pocketed it. It was hers, anyhow.

If Buffy was missing her, she’d have to do something about it, not just wank off with her vibe.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

When Buffy had noticed the vibrator was missing, she had at first thought nothing of it, but when it didn’t turn up after a few days, a jolt of realization shot through her, closely followed by a wave of hot embarrassment, and then anger.

She marched into Spike’s crypt in the middle of the day, furious at the violation, and realized as soon as she crossed the threshold that if she said anything, it would be an acknowledgement that she had taken it. And not only taken it, but had used it regularly enough to miss it.

“Yeah, Slayer?” Spike said, sitting up, voice innocent, smile angelic.

“Nothing!” Buffy told her, and walked right back out.

**☾☾☾**

The vibe went missing again a few nights later. Spike had been keeping an eye on it this time. “Naughty girl,” she purred, when she discovered it missing. “Poor lil Slayer. No one to give you a good seeing-to, huh? Gotta do it for yourself, with my toys, love?”

Buffy wasn’t there, of course. But it was so easy to slip into the person she had been with her — sex-on-legs confidence and pretend morality, now that she knew Buffy was thinking about it too. Probably sitting on her frilly bloody bed at home, playing with the thing on her clit, muffling her sweet little whimpers so Dawn and Willow wouldn’t hear.

Spike had never fucked her in her own home, for the sake of secrecy, but now she was thinking about it. How hard Buffy would try to keep quiet, and how she’d break that if it killed her.

She waited about a week before she nicked it back. Buffy wouldn’t look at her the next time they met on patrol. “Have a satisfying night, pet,” she said, when they parted, and Buffy looked nigh on homicidal.

This time, she hid it between the pillows on the bed. See how determined Buffy was.

It took a good few weeks, but when she flopped into bed one Thursday, her head didn’t hit plastic, the way it occasionally had done. Feeling around for it, she determined it had gone again, and started laughing almost helplessly. Buffy Anne Summers, the queen of having it both ways. Flirting but no sex, making Spike imagine her having a little private time but no acknowledgement.

This time she replaced it — Buffy was either shit at cleaning sex toys or pathetic at hiding things, Spike had found it in under a minute just by following the scent of Buffy’s arousal around the room — with the black plastic strap-on that they’d had so much fun with.

That one paid off. Buffy strode into her crypt the very next morning, dildo in hand, and said, furiously, “What the _hell_ is this?”

“Say, looks a bit like my prick,” Spike told her, sitting up in bed, where she had not been sleeping, waiting for Buffy to come around and yell at her. “Wonder how that got in your sock drawer.”

“You — ” Buffy brandished the hunk of plastic at her, and then tossed it with Slayer accuracy so that Spike had to duck to avoid getting hit in the face. “Stay out of my house or I’ll revoke your invitation, Spike!”

“How’s that fair, when I can’t revoke yours?”

“I don’t _care_ about fair. Stop creeping around!”

Spike called, “Catch, Slayer,” and on an instinct long-honed by taking weapons this way, Buffy’s hand flew up to grab the item that flew at her out of the air. It was the vibrator, and she flushed to her ears when she realized it.

“Ugh!” She tossed it down, her blonde hair shaking when she did so, beautiful in her rage. “You’re such a pig!”

“Well, if you’re not going to let me give it to you, I’d hate to see you not giving it to yourself,” Spike said, smooth and amused. “Go on, Slayer. Take it. Think of me, gorgeous.”

“You’re disgusting,” Buffy said, and whirled on her heel.

But when Spike checked, later, she hadn’t left anything behind on the floor.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

She couldn’t use it. Not knowing Spike knew. Not hearing _think of me, gorgeous_ in her head every time she reached between her legs.

“I can’t _believe_ you ruined masturbation too,” she said aloud to her empty room, and tossed the vibrator into the wall so hard it broke into two pieces. She wasn’t sure what had come over her, to engage in that little game.

It was basically flirting, given the fact that Spike’s love language was committing crimes and talking dirty.

Buffy covered her face with her hands, and groaned, knowing she had brought this on herself. After Angel had left, she had missed him like a limb, and had wanted to be kissed, badly enough that sometimes she had looked in the mirror and touched her lips to make them tingle with the desire of it. When Riley had left, she’d missed him mostly conceptually — she’d loved him, she had, but not with the same sort of desperate craving she’d had for Angel. Missed talking to him, sitting on the couch in his arms. She didn’t love Spike — Spike was wrong about that — but looking at her sometimes made her practically choke on want of the peace she knew those hands could bring. Even when she wasn’t there, sometimes she would catch a whiff of cigarette smoke or see peroxide blonde hair in a crowd and shiver.

Maybe this was what having a purely sexual relationship was like. She’d missed Angel like the teenager in love that she was and Riley for the normalcy he’d _almost_ brought her. She missed Spike like a _lover_ , and every time she went to touch herself — something she’d never done so frequently before — she saw blue eyes and hard muscles before her eyes, pictured Spike’s wicked grin just before she stuck her face between Buffy’s legs.

Was it normal to miss her body so much?

Soulless, evil creature of the night, she reminded herself, like that mattered.

**☾☾☾**

Starting from scratch, by Buffy’s meaning, meant Spike was right back to those pathetic months after she’d realized she loved the silly girl, but before she’d made the mistake of saying anything. Hanging on scraps of information, following her around like a puppy, being overly solicitous and, all in all, acting like a lovesick bloody teenager. Trying to make her job easier when she wasn’t watching.

It was better than ending it. After all, now she knew she had the upper hand. Buffy had _feelings_. For her. But it was also like she was back in the Victorian Era desperately wanting to ask a girl to dance and knowing she couldn’t.

She tipped her glass, and sprawled across the couch. “Think she’d like me better if I got a soul? If Angelus could get his hands on one, I bloody well could.”

Clem shrugged. “Do you want one?”

“Vampire. Slayer. _Non-mixy things_ , she’d say. You know, she was all bloody eager to have my sodding grandsire’s fangs in her. Don’t know what she saw in him.”

“A soul?” Clem tried, and Spike waved him quiet.

“And Drac! I mean, come on. Bet she’s not even the first Slayer who’s gotten jiggy with a vamp, but she’s so fixated on my bloody soul. It’s because Angelus and that sodding Watcher of hers got all in her head about how a demon comes in and takes over the body of a vampire. Evicts previous occupant. G’bye, human, hello, pure evil.” She paused. “And I _am_ evil. I’m just saying, I’m also a _person_ , aren’t I?”

“I don’t really think you’re listening to me,” Clem said, and poured himself another drink.

“I mean, _pure evil_ here. Killed loads of people. Kids, even — oh, don’t look at me like that, it was Dru that wanted the kids, I was just making her happy. Stolen things — well, haven’t raped, but I’ve killed a lot of people who I’ve fucked. But I’m still … well, I’m not going to tell you my full name. But anyway, I’m still her, just better. Not that killing makes me better, just more fun. But you know — god, fuck, it’s a good thing she can’t hear this or she’d get all ‘wiggy’. And we can’t have that, because then we end up bloody blue-balled and dumped because of _morals_.”

“I think the Slayer’s a nice girl,” said Clem.

“Slayer’s an absolute bitch,” Spike said. “Which is what I like about her.”

**✧** **✧** **✧**

“So I was thinking,” Spike said, while they were walking silently on patrol.

“Never a good sign,” Buffy interjected.

“D’you want to get a drink after we finish here?”

Buffy blinked, and tried to decide whether a Buffy who had never been stupid enough to sleep with Spike in the first place would have said yes. Or whether she wanted to. Well, she did want to. The question was more whether she _ought_ to, and maybe whether drinking a little would help make things feel less awkward. While she was pondering it, though, she spied motion across the graveyard — ten or so vampires, if her tinglies were right, standing around in a huddle. “Loser pays,” she answered, and dove into the fight.

She won 6-4, but she was pretty sure Spike had thrown the game.

When Spike had brought her a cocktail and herself a shot of whiskey, they sat at a table in the Bronze and watched the teenagers act like idiots. “I always look at them and wonder if I ever looked that young,” she said.

“Yeah, you did, grandma,” Spike replied, bolting back her drink. “And now you’re a full _three_ years older than them you don’t look young at all.”

Buffy glared. “You’re not a very good date.”

Spike blinked. “Is this a date?” Silence fell at the table. Then, the familiar addition: “Do you want it to be?”

“Sort of.”

It was worth the little capitulation to watch Spike’s face light up, from her brilliant eyes to her smirking mouth. “Bet I can take you from sort of to a soft yes,” she replied.

“Whatever you’re about to say had better not involve the back alley,” Buffy warned her. “Unless there’s somebody to dust, and if there isn’t anybody it’ll be _you_.”

“Actually, I thought you’d like to dance,” Spike said, smoothly, and held out her hand across the table.

Buffy liked dancing. She liked dancing in crowds where no one but her friends could see her, specifically, and Spike was not really her friend, which meant that saying yes was dicey. But the reply was out of her mouth before she could think better of it, her hand creeping over the table to tangle with Spike’s. “All right. I’m not really dressed for it, though.”

“Nah, love, you’re dressed to kill, but we can make it work.”

Spike was a surprisingly good dancer, although actually, she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. It really was mostly vertical fucking, the way she did it — all sinuous hips and graceful sway, and her hands on Buffy’s waist practically felt like they were burning when they spun her out of the way of another couple. Her coat was draped over their chairs, and the tight black shirt she was wearing did nothing to hide her biceps when she held Buffy upright. “Hadn’t they barely invented the waltz when you were born?” Buffy asked, sticking out her lower lip.

“Dru loved dancing,” Spike said, loud over the roar of the music. “So I did a load of it over the years. Could teach you how to tango if you fancied it.”

“With the rose?” Buffy asked, using her hand to mime pulling it through her teeth.

“Thorns and all, baby,” Spike told her, and flashed her sharp teeth, just a flicker of her vampire face. Instead of being disgusted, Buffy was appalled to hear herself start giggling, and hid her face by ducking it into Spike’s shoulder.

When she looked up, Spike was looking at her like she was the only person in the room.

**☾☾☾**

_Giving you, but not this, a chance_ had turned out to mean Spike was permitted to hang around, and flirt as she liked, but not to touch unless invited. It also meant that there were places they did not go. Buffy’s bedroom, or her bathroom, Spike’s crypt. Sometimes they sat outside in the graveyard at night, but they didn’t get anywhere near a bed, which was probably because Buffy couldn’t stop herself from pulling her into it, Spike thought proudly.

Herself, she wouldn’t mind fucking on a grave. Wasn’t like they hadn’t done it before. But Buffy seemed to equate non-bed spaces to non-fucking spaces, or places she didn’t think Spike would think about fucking, maybe, laughably innocent as that was. So she kept hands off, even though she desperately wanted to put hands on.

And if she rubbed herself off imagining bending Buffy over the fucking Simmons tomb and eating her until she cried, that was her own business.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Buffy was keeping secrets again, she realized. As far as she was aware, no one but Dawn and Willow in passing had seen Spike since the Anya incident, and although she had spoken to Xander afterwards, it hadn’t ended well. She hadn’t told anyone that she and Spike were on tentative speaking terms again, and she definitely hadn’t told them about dancing at the Bronze, or the fact that they’d spent weeks taking turns stealing sex toys from each other. It was just going to fester again, even if it never got any further than tentative friendship, so Buffy did the sensible thing. She told Dawn.

“Duh,” Dawn said. “You wore that red blouse out on patrol the other night. You know, the one that makes her look at your cleavage?”

Then she told Tara, who was around more these days, and had been much less judgmental last time than she was sure Willow was going to be.

Tara just smiled, looking vaguely uncomfortable, and told her to be careful.

Willow gaped for almost ten seconds before she managed to close her mouth again, looking like she thought Buffy had gone insane. “You _cannot_ tell Xander,” Buffy said, and Willow’s face went through the seven stages of grief. “ _Yet_ ,” she amended. “And anyway, it’s not like I’m sleeping with her. I’m just — ”

“Giving her a chance,” Willow finished. “I can’t believe — I mean, after Anya — ”

“She actually apologized to me for that,” Buffy told her.

Willow’s face took another journey, this one into disbelief. “… _Spike_? _Apologized_?”

“Yeah. I mean, she was kind of angry and scary when she did it and I just wanted to take a bath, but. Yeah, she apologized.”

“Oh my god, she really _is_ in love with you,” Willow said. “Or she’s possessed. Have we considered possession? Can vampires be possessed?”

“I don’t know, why don’t you research it.”

“I can’t believe you were so weird about me and Tara and now you’re dating _Spike_ ,” Willow continued, ignoring her. “I mean, I’m a lesbian, but she’s a _lesbian_. Wait, are _you_ a lesbian?”

“Um, no,” Buffy said, now bright red. “I mean, I don’t think so. I’m still all about boys. Just, also some girls, I guess. Also, I’m not _dating Spike_. I’m just not ignoring her and cutting her out of my life.”

“How many times did you sleep with her?”

“Will!”

“What?” Willow replied, unrepentantly. “You didn’t let me gossip about this while it was happening, so I have to get it in now.”

“I don’t _know_. Oh my god. We are _not_ talking about this.”

Willow lowered her voice to a whisper. “Was she good?” Buffy couldn’t look her in the eye, and Willow grinned. “That’s a yes,” she said. “You know, seeing her sophomore year was the first time I thought, hey, maybe I’m gay.”

Buffy wrinkled her nose.

“Not like, in an I’m-attracted-to-her way, just in a — you know, I’m-looking-at-a-lesbian way.”

“She was trying to kill me!” Buffy said, not sure whether she was feeling indignant or jealous.

“It’s not like I was _fantasizing_ ,” Willow replied. “I just said I had the thought. Then I started dating Oz, so clearly it didn’t stick.”

“No Anya, no Xander, and no Giles, if he calls,” Buffy told her. “And no anybody who would tell any of those people.”

**☾☾☾**

“Is that — ”

“Yeah,” Spike said, knowing without looking at her that she was pointing to the wooden dildo on the dresser. “Look, kitten, I’ve told you, I don’t know a thing about your green fellow with the disappearing act, but I’ll put out feelers.”

“Do you just leave that out?” Buffy sounded vaguely hysterical.

“Sentimental value. Anyway, not like anyone comes down here but me these days.”

Despite being a terror between the sheets, Buffy could sometimes be one hell of a prude, although Spike liked to think there was something pleased in her eyes that she wasn’t having company. “I — ugh.”

“Relax, Slayer,” she drawled, and tossed it in the bedside drawer. “Big, bad strap’s all gone now. You know, you’re the Madonna-whore complex all wrapped up in a person.”

“The _what_?”

“You know — innocent little do-gooder in the streets, hussy in the sheets. Nothing to do with my commitment, obviously, I like both.”

“ _Hussy_?”

“I said I like both!”

Buffy stomped out of the room, but it was difficult to climb a ladder in a huff. Funny to watch her try, though. Not a half-bad view, either, even though she was in jeans.

Spike got in a “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded!” before she made it out the door.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

No vampires made for a boring night, with or without company on patrol. Although, to be fair, it was probably a mark of Buffy’s immense success as guardian of the hellmouth that she had been wandering cemeteries for hours and hadn’t yet found anyone except Spike, who was always hanging around anyway. “So, can I ask you a question?”

Spike shrugged one shoulder, foot dangling off of the tomb she was lying on top of, hand with a cigarette in it coming up to her mouth. “If I can ask you one back.”

“Fine,” Buffy said, rolling her eyes. “What the _hell_ is that?”

“Demon,” Spike told her, like Buffy couldn’t see that perfectly well, even without the head anywhere in evidence. “Figured I’d have you drop by and see if Anya wanted it. Liver blood’s used in rituals sometimes. Think the skin would make decent boots, too.”

“Ugh,” said Buffy. “Why don’t _you_ drop by and see if she wants it butchered?”

“Figured you wouldn’t want me to go make friendly with her. Or Harris, not that I give a fuck what he wants. So, do the vampire ‘tinglies’ or whatever you call ‘em go away during sex?”

Buffy gritted her teeth. “ — no, but you kind of stop noticing after a while.”

Spike smirked at her. “ _Yeah_ , you do.”

“Do the Slayer tinglies go away during sex?”

“That’s another question, love.”

“Fine, so ask me another one.”

“First, it’s more like a hair on the back of my neck raising sort of thing. Second, yeah, pretty much as long as I’m looking at you, it’s back to the regular senses again unless I’m trying to feel you out. Now, tit for tat. D’you think the vamp face is hot?”

“I am _not_ answering that.”

“That’s a yes,” Spike said. “Bet Angel always kept his all tucked away. Didn’t know you liked a little rough and tumble.”

“It’s not a yes,” Buffy protested. “It’s _not_. It’s all — bumpy and weird, it’s not hot.”

“Fangs, though — ”

“Yeah, fangs are okay,” Buffy replied, feeling her insides squirm at the admission. “And that was two!”

“So ask me another one.”

“Um.” Buffy sat down on the ground next to the dead demon, although far enough away from it that the puddle of blood spilling from its neck wasn’t anywhere near her. Spike was right, oddly enough. The skin was sort of scaly and iridescent in the moonlight, and it _would_ make a nice pair of boots. “Tell me what your last name was.”

Spike sat up. “Why d’you want to know?”

“I’m just _wondering_. It’s not like I can steal your identity with it, Spike, you’re already dead.”

The answer was mumbled.

“What was that?”

“Pratt.”

“Oh, no,” Buffy said, giggling. “ _Wilhelmina Pratt_. And you thought _Randy Giles_ was bad. _Please_ tell me you have a middle name and that it’s Evangeline.”

“ _Your_ name is _Buffy_.” Spike looked torn between being vastly unhappy and being a little pleased, the way she usually did when Buffy was laughing at her expense. “And I’m absolutely not telling you that even if I do get another question out of it.”

“ _Please_ , Miss Pratt.”

This time she got the look that said, _remember I can kill you now_. “If you ever tell any of your little friends that I’m gonna reconsider making you my third notch.”

“I’ll give you a kiss for it,” Buffy offered impulsively. “Your middle name, I mean.”

Spike froze, and peered down at her. Buffy forced herself to keep looking up, even though she knew she was flushing. Then, the vampire grinned. “Tell you what, Slayer. I’ll give you five options and you can have a guess which one is right per kiss.”

Buffy considered, and then shrugged. “All right.”

Spike landed in front of her with a soft thud. “Right, then. Evangeline, Louise, Mercy, Lucy, or Katherine.”

“Hmm,” said Buffy. “It’s not Lucy, because you definitely would have mentioned that when you were complaining about Dracula. It’s not Evangeline, because that would be too much of a coincidence. Mercy is way too funny to be real. And you don’t look like a Louise, so I’m going Katherine.”

The sharp teeth flashed when Spike grinned at her again. “Give us a kiss, then, Slayer.”

“God, I hope it’s Mercy,” Buffy said, and went up on tiptoe, putting her hands on Spike’s leather-clad shoulders and pulling her down. Spike’s mouth opened slightly, her eyes fluttering shut, and then Buffy kissed her on the nose and danced away at the snarl she got in return. “You should’ve been more specific.”

“None of those is my middle name anyhow,” Spike told her, irritated.

“I know,” Buffy replied. “But Mercy _would_ be really funny.”

**☾☾☾**

Spike was more or less used to watching Buffy take a punch and stagger back, sometimes even get thrown to the ground or into something. It wasn’t really a cause to stop playing with her food, a seven-foot-tall Carnyss demon who was, proverbially, too busy checking out his own arse to stop it from getting kicked. It didn’t mean she was in trouble.

Buffy _screaming_ was a sign she was in trouble. Spike grabbed her demon by the hands and savored its puzzled face before she drove her head up into its chin and stunned it just long enough for her to tear its head off.

Or try to. The muscle was a little too thick for that, and her hand wrenched at his ear and then slid off. “Fuck,” she said, and then it was on top of her. She kneed it in the stomach as it fell on her, and then sunk her teeth into its throat when its head was thrown forward with a blow. That put enough of a dent in the muscle for her tearing to work this time. Like starting an orange.

She tossed the head to the side and scrambled up to help Buffy, only to find her circling her opponent, who was laughing in that way that stupid sodding bastards often did before they got killed. Neither one of them looked very good — the demon had clearly taken the sharp end of Buffy’s weapon a couple of times, and Buffy was limping and her face was bloody. But Spike had seen her fight before, and when she got that grim, steady look in her eyes it usually meant something was imminently about to die.

“Slayer, want a hand?” she asked.

“I _want_ ice cream and a beach day,” Buffy replied. “But I’ll settle for a hand.”

Spike contemplated the comedy value of actually getting one of the thing’s hands off versus the effort of severing bone, ligaments, and muscle without a sharp tool. Comedy, as usual, lost out. Instead, she just dove for the thing, dodging a fist and smacking her own into its jaw, to remarkably little effect.

The same could not be said of the second fist she took to the stomach, knocking her backwards as Buffy lunged. Picking herself up, she launched herself at the thing’s back, wrapping her legs around its waist and her arms around its throat. The impact pitched it forwards towards Buffy, and the two of them struck almost simultaneously, Buffy with her blade and Spike with her teeth. The head came off while the thing was already falling, and Spike tumbled off its back with a grunt and rolled onto her feet, shaking her head like a dog to stop the blood on her face from dripping.

Buffy stood between the bodies, panting, and for a moment, while she wasn’t looking at Spike, Spike could observe her tired profile, her heaving, lively chest. “You hurt, Slayer?”

“He split my eyebrow,” she said. “I’m going to look like you.”

“Nah, you’ll heal up. What about that leg?”

“I was on the ground and he stomped on it,” Buffy told her, lower lip sticking out in that way that meant she was dismayed. “That was when I — well, it hurts.”

“Here, give us a look.” Spike knelt down, and grimaced when Buffy let her lift her pants leg and have a look at the ankle. It was already angrily swelling, reddened and beginning to bruise. She reached out and bent it a little; Buffy gasped and the soft grinding sound of bone on bone hit Spike’s ear. “That’s some flavor of broken, kitten.”

Buffy groaned. “That’ll take a _week_!”

“Takes most people two months, so count your blessings. Let’s get you on to a hospital.” Spike swept her off her feet and into her arms before she could protest.

Buffy protested anyway, pushing at her chest. “Hey, I can walk.”

“Like hell you can.”

“Also, no hospital. Can’t pay.”

Spike looked down at her. “Fucking Americans.” The car would be a good bet either way, although she was fairly certain the passenger seat was filled with takeout containers. “All right, pet, I’ll drive you home.”

Buffy insisted on hopping on her back for the journey from the car into the house rather than be carried princess-style again. Which ended up being a good choice, since that left her a hand free to open the door, and made turning the corner of the stairs easier. When she turned around to let her drop onto the bed, Buffy made a little noise of pain at the impact and then shed her jacket. “Thanks,” she said, when Spike helped her get off her shoe and sock. “Oh, that looks horrible.”

“Eh, I’ve done worse,” Spike told her, and then looked up with a grimace. “I mean, I’ve seen worse.”

Buffy laughed instead of looking disgusted, which was a blessing.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

While the ankle healed, Spike patrolled on her behalf, sometimes with Xander in tow, but usually alone, because patrolling with Xander in tow tended to end with the two of them coming back to Revello Drive glaring daggers at each other. Daggers were pretty much the best she could hope for, Buffy guessed, given that Xander had been into glaring _axes_ at her fairly recently.

“Two vampires, one demon,” Xander told her when they got in. “Actually, two demons, but Our Lady of Mercy here decided to let one go.”

“Friend of mine,” Spike said, unrepentant, twiddling her lighter in one hand as she sat on the foot of the bed. “How’s the ankle, Slayer?”

“Fine,” Buffy told her, twitching aside the covers to show it. Nearly a week in, the swelling was almost entirely gone, and so was the pain — at least when she was sitting in bed. Mostly, she was just stir-crazy. “Anything interesting happen?”

“Runaway Bride here got his arse handed to him by a fledgling.”

“Because you told her I wasn’t guarding my left well enough!”

“And now you know to watch your left,” Spike informed him. “Really, I did you a favor.”

“Are you _trying_ to get him _killed_?” Buffy asked, incredulous.

“No!” Spike replied, so immediately that it had to be the truth.

“Yeah, just smacked around a little,” Xander interjected. “I don’t know why you trust her, Buff. Undead creature of the night, remember? No soul? Evil?”

“Talk dirty to me,” Spike muttered, and Buffy struggled not to laugh.

“I’ll talk to her,” Buffy assured him, and saw Spike’s spine stiffen. Xander gave her a reluctant nod, kissed her on the forehead, and started to leave, then remembered that he probably didn’t want to leave her alone with an undead creature of the night, turning back at the doorway. “I can stake her myself, Xander,” she said. “I am the Slayer. _Spike_ is not going to get one over on me.”

He left. Spike shoved her hands into her pockets, looking for all the world like a child awaiting a scolding. “Stop trying to get my friends killed,” Buffy told her.

“I was _right there_ , he wasn’t going to get killed,” Spike protested. “Also, I’ve gotten one over on you before.”

“Thanks for protecting him,” Buffy added, and leaned forward to kiss her, brief and dry.

Spike looked like she’d been smacked in the face with a frying pan when she pulled back. “Buffy?” she murmured, quizzical.

Buffy held her angular face between her hands for a moment, then laid back down. “But seriously, if you get him hurt I’m going to dust you and then I’m going to use your ashes as slug repellent in the garden.”

**☾☾☾**

First kiss with Buffy in months, Spike thought, and raked a hand through her hair, reaching for the whiskey, and then putting it back, and then reaching it again.

What the fuck was the Slayer thinking? Did this mean she was coming around, or was this another part of _giving you, but not this_ , _a chance_?

Fuck it, a drink was in order. She felt like the first time a maid had flirted with her in the Victorian Era. A heady mix of _did that really just happen_ and _god, what is wrong with me that I can’t stop thinking about it_. The first shot of whiskey went down easy.

She had literally had her tongue in basically every hole the Slayer had. One little kiss shouldn’t affect her like this.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

“You kissed me,” Spike told her, her first patrol back. _Déjà vu_ , Buffy thought.

“I was there,” she pointed out.

Spike gave a little frustrated growl. “You _know_ what I mean. Why?”

“You made me laugh,” Buffy said.

“I make you laugh all the time. You owe me a couple dozen kisses, if that’s how we’re playing it.”

Buffy got to dodge answering by virtue of being attacked by a vampire from the side, where it had snuck up on her while she’d been busy talking to Spike. Only, vampires were mostly old hat now, and it was dead in less than thirty seconds, leaving her coughing on dust and patting it off her red blouse.

Spike was still looking at her when she looked back.

“Spike, I don’t know. I wanted to kiss you and it didn’t seem like a bad idea.”

“Then, can I — ?”

“Just one,” Buffy said, and then Spike’s arms were around her waist, her face tipping down to press their mouths together. It wasn’t as consuming as Buffy had expected, for all the speed with which Spike had moved, another soft, dry kiss that ended with Spike kissing the corner of her mouth before she withdrew. “That was two,” she pointed out, softly.

“I’m a soulless, evil thing,” Spike said, managing to sound only a little bitter. “Sometimes I take a mile when given an inch.”

Buffy laughed.

Spike grinned at her. “There, made you laugh twice. So we’re even.”

**☾☾☾**

It became a semi-regular thing, which was, officially, fucking torture. If she made Buffy laugh on patrol, Buffy would turn to her and let her give her a kiss, which admittedly led Spike to do some fairly ridiculous things on purpose to earn a laugh. They didn’t kiss otherwise, and even when Spike tried, Buffy wouldn’t let her deepen it. She wondered, a little, if Buffy was playing with her demon. Seeing how long she could take it before she snapped and kissed her properly, like she was practically begging for.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Spike was holding out remarkably well, although she now turned to Buffy every time she heard her laugh, a practically Pavlovian reaction even when the laugh was for someone or something else.

Not that Buffy was trying to torture her or anything.

It was a nice side effect, though.

“Trying out a new tactic for killing vampires?” Dawn asked her, and Buffy nearly choked on her coffee.

“What are you talking about?”

“Spike keeps giving you looks like she wants to kill you,” Dawn said matter-of-factly, as if Spike wasn’t twenty feet away on the porch and definitely within vampire earshot. “So you must be doing _something_. Normally she gets really into this movie.”

“ _Steel Magnolias_?”

Dawn shrugged.

“It’s a classic,” Spike yelled from outside, and Buffy snickered. “That’s one, Slayer!”

“One what?” Dawn asked.

“Nothing,” Buffy told her.

“Is this a sex thing?”

“Yes,” Spike called, at the same time Buffy said, “ _No_.”

Dawn burst into giggles.

“Stop smoking and come watch Shelby die,” Buffy yelled at the porch. “If you manage not to cry we’ll make it two.”

Spike reappeared in the doorway. “You’re on.”

“You _guys_ ,” Dawn whined. “I’m _right here_.”

“And if _you_ manage not to cry, Niblet, I’ll eat a rat,” Spike told her.

Dawn’s nose wrinkled. “Whatever, Spike. You’re going to lose too.”

**☾☾☾**

“Is this a surprise gay double date?” Willow asked, when Spike draped herself over a chair and lit up. “Also, I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to smoke in here.”

“Yeah,” Spike answered, at the same time Buffy said, “No.” Then she turned and flashed Buffy a sharp grin. “Also, I’m an evil vampire. If you think I’m obeying a no-smoking sign, you’re off your nut.”

Tara looked back and forth between Buffy and Spike, silent and confused. “What are you doing here, Spike?” Buffy asked, finally.

“Saw Red, decided to drop by and say hello. Nice to see you too, Slayer.”

Willow quirked her head to the side. “You came to _say hi_ to me?”

“Couldn’t see Buffy’s head over that bloke,” Spike said, jerking her thumb at the guy sitting against the railing behind her. She turned back to Buffy. “Thought you were out patrolling tonight, gorgeous, not clubbing.”

“You came to say hi to _me_?” Willow repeated.

“I decided to take the night off when Will invited me to come out with them,” Buffy explained. “And put that out, I hate the smell.”

“No, you don’t,” Spike said, but she obligingly stubbed it out anyway, and frowned when she caught Tara hiding a smile behind her hand. “Care for a dance?”

“Ooh!” said Willow. “Yes! Let’s dance.”

“I wasn’t asking you,” Spike pointed out.

“And _I_ wasn’t saying yes to _you_ ,” Willow replied, holding up Tara’s hand entangled with her own. “Come on, Tara.”

“Nice dress, Slayer,” Spike told her, when they had gone. It _was_ a nice dress. Green and slinky, short like Buffy had used to favor. _Bright_ green. She narrowed her eyes. “Wait, is that that god-awful bridesmaid’s dress?”

“It’s _made out of that_ god-awful bridesmaid’s dress,” Buffy clarified. “The color was okay-ish, and it seemed like a waste to buy it and then never wear it again. Now, are we going to dance?”

Not needing telling twice, Spike jumped to her feet and held out a hand, feeling somewhat in disbelief of her luck. “Didn’t honestly think you’d say yes, given your little friends being here and all.”

“Oh, they know,” Buffy said, as she took it.

Spike was so dumbfounded that she almost tripped when Buffy pulled her towards the dance floor. “Wait, what?”

“They know,” Buffy repeated. “I told them I was giving you a chance. I mean, Xander doesn’t. But the girls know.” Spike could feel herself gaping, and closed her mouth with some effort. Buffy smiled, that soft, amused smile that she had worn the last time she had worn this dress. It lit up her eyes from the inside, not that the dress’ violent color didn’t help with that. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever struck you speechless.”

“At least without getting naked first,” Spike added.

“If you drive us home at the end of the night I’ll give you a kiss,” Buffy said. “Sooo don’t want to walk on these heels.”

“I’m not falling for that one again, Slayer,” Spike told her, like she wasn’t so thoroughly pussy-whipped for this girl that she’d do it for free.

“A real kiss,” Buffy promise, drawing her finger across her breast in a crossing motion that did nothing but draw Spike’s eyes to her cleavage. “However you want it — ”

“All right, fine, I’ll drive you home.”

Buffy crowed at her victory, and Spike took the opportunity to bend towards her and take a kiss, deciding that counted as a laugh. Buffy let her, even though they were in public, and if her heart could beat it would be thundering.

The kiss on the porch was almost enough to properly defibrillate her, Scoobies all inside when Buffy in the soft light filtering through the window turned back to her and held out her arms. One kiss meant _one_ , she figured, and she didn’t need to breathe, so she lifted Buffy onto the porch railing and pressed their lips together, kissing her good and deep and proper until Buffy thumped at her chest to be let up for air, taking panting shaky breaths and clinging to Spike’s jacket to keep her upright. Her mouth was swollen and shining, her cheeks red, eyes glazed, the scent of her arousal was beginning to tint the air around them… and then she reached for Spike again, mouth soft and open and nigh irresistible —

Spike drew back from her, bodies still pressed together, and smirked. If they were going to play cat and mouse games, she’d rather be the cat. “Ah-ah, pet,” she murmured. “One kiss, you said. I know the rules.”

The green eyes flashed, but Buffy’s heaving chest drew her eye more inexorably. “I didn’t _want_ more than one,” she denied, breathless, disentangling her fingers from Spike’s coat.

Spike leaned in close enough to draw in a breath from her lips, and then breathed it out, warm from Buffy’s lungs, against her ear as she whispered. “ _Liar_.”

Buffy still smelled like heat and sex when she left her on the porch.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

It was only a matter of time after that, Buffy knew, just like it had only been a matter of time the first time she had kissed Spike, fresh off of that stupid singing demon’s thrall. Buffy had been holding the leash, but now Spike had ahold of the line and was reeling her in. She kept replaying the kiss, more than she had their first, Spike’s hand on her jaw and the other on her ass, edging just barely between her knees where Buffy was teetering on the porch railing, forced to hang onto her coattails to stay upright. How on earth did someone like _Spike_ learn to kiss like a hero out of every romance movie? There was no way that crazy bitch she had been with for her entire unlife liked it like that.

She had probably been kind of a ladykiller when she’d been alive, too, Buffy reasoned, even if she had had to be much more secretive about it. That, or she’d as much as said that Drusilla had brought others into bed with them — a concept that made Buffy squirm uncomfortably when it related to _Angel_ — and maybe she had learned it with one of them.

The worst part was, Spike knew it was all but over. Every time she saw Buffy she smirked like the cat that had gotten the canary, and when they were fighting, she had developed a habit of brushing her fingers over the small of Buffy’s back every time they passed each other, which Buffy knew she shouldn’t allow, but which she couldn’t bear to let go of. She was even more full of innuendo than usual, and it seemed that she’d found a way to make the curve of her mouth around her cigarette look blatantly suggestive.

“I got all of eternity to wait,” Spike told her, dripping with goo after a demon that looked like a blob of ketchup had exploded all over her when she had punched a hole in it. Buffy was still giggling at the sight of her, and had held up her hands and run away when she had come to claim her kiss.

“I’m not kissing you until you shower,” she insisted, breathless with laughter. “And I’m laughing _at_ you, not with you.”

“I take all currencies,” Spike said, wiping the red stuff off her face and groaning when she realized her duster had taken the spray just like the rest of her. “I’m _never_ gonna get this out of the leather.”

“I have saddle soap at home,” Buffy told her. “And, like, an actual shower and not a cold, broken pipe next to your crypt.”

“I could kiss you, pet.” Spike sounded genuinely grateful, although the effect was ruined a little by the fact that she was trying to wring ketchup-demon out of her short hair.

“Not until you shower,” Buffy repeated.

Spike came out of her shower with her skin steaming and her hair slicked back on her head, curling at the temples, a towel wrapped around her waist, baring the muscles of her arms and shoulders as well as her breasts when she poked her head back into Buffy’s room. “Kitten, can I borrow some clothes? Think mine need a good wash before anyone touches them.”

Buffy had to reactivate her brain before she answered, and then spared a moment to hope that Dawn was in her room and not looking at Spike’s bare chest. “Um, I’m pretty sure that none of my stuff will fit you. I might have a shirt of Riley’s?”

Spike pulled a face.

“Let me go ask Will,” she said, and wormed past her in the doorway, trembling at little at the heat off her body.

Willow provided an oversized, purple fluffy sweater — Buffy knew she had a jersey Oz had left behind somewhere, but the sweater was funnier — and Spike’s hips were close enough in size to her own that a pair of her pajama shorts fit. Buffy started giggling again, helplessly, when she got a look at her, Willow’s fluffy purple monstrosity barely containing her shoulders and shoved up to her elbows, bare pale legs capped with pink faux-silk. “Never gonna live this one down if I walk across town,” Spike muttered, hair drying in curls that Buffy had never actually seen on her. When the gel broke out of her hair during sex, it curled, but never like this, soft, errant, and fluffy.

“You look like a lamb,” Buffy said, laughing hysterically.

“I’m trying to sleep!” Dawn said from the doorway, and then saw Spike sitting on the floor clad in Willow’s sweater and burst out laughing too.

“I’m counting that as three,” Spike grumbled. “Now give me that bloody saddle soap.”

When Spike’s clothes were in the washer and the vampire herself was down in the basement scrubbing crusted red goo off her duster, Buffy made up the couch for her and went up to bed.

She was half-asleep when Spike slipped into her bedroom a few hours later and bent over her bed to lay three kisses up the side of her throat. “Mm,” she said, and reached for her without thinking better of it, and Spike stole a fourth from her mouth.

“Sleep well, love.”

In the morning, she was gone, along with her coat.

**☾☾☾**

Buffy was going to break any day now, Spike was sure of it. If they were in the same room and Spike licked her lips, or got out a cigarette, Buffy’s eyes went straight to her mouth, and the kisses she’d been winning after making her laugh had started to get a little handsy. The old Spike would have broken the second Buffy put a hand on her ass, but now she just let Buffy slip her hot little hands into her back pockets and kept the kisses light.

Remember Atalanta, she thought. It would be so much sweeter if Buffy gave in, if she got to be chased instead of chasing.

Much as she hated it, the chip had taught her some impulse control. When Buffy ogled the line of her legs in her tattered jeans when she sat on her couch, her mouth watered with the want of pinning her down and kissing her senseless, but she kept her cool and spread her knees on the couch instead, let Buffy imagine kneeling between her thighs. When Buffy got wet watching her fight, instead of falling on her knees and pushing her into a gravestone to eat her pussy, she just made an excuse to stretch after the foe had fallen and then adjusted her jeans around her hips, drawing Buffy’s eyes to her crotch.

Buffy might be the queen of self-denial — and when it came right down to it, Spike wasn’t capable of refusing her anything she asked for — but until Buffy asked, Spike was perfectly happy to be the _king_ of Buffy-denial.

Well, _perfectly happy_ was overstating it. She was wet most of the time she was around Buffy and she was fairly certain she’d never wanked off this often. Her poison wasn’t usually penetration, but she’d worn her fingers out so many times in so many ways that she broke out the wooden strap-on again just to keep things fresh. Her dreams were straight out of cheap, sordid pornos, and she was fairly certain that whenever Buffy gave in she’d go off like a thirteen-year-old boy as soon as she got her hands on her.

But she was happy enough, because Buffy had it just as bad, to look at her squirming in her seat when Spike leaned against something or the way she averted her eyes like she was in pain when Spike grinned at her, the grin she knew was pure, unadulterated sex.

The only thing that could make it better was actually _getting some_.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Xander caught Spike claiming one of her prizes outside Revello Drive just as spring was edging into summer, and he took it about as well as could be expected. “I can’t _believe_ this!” he said, and Buffy had to chase him down the street before he could get back in his car and leave.

“Xander,” she tried. “It’s just a — ”

“ _Just a kiss_?” he snapped, whirling on her. “With _Spike_? What the hell do you see in her, Buffy? What is wrong with you? I thought you said it was over.”

Buffy flinched. “It was — look, I was going to tell you.” She looked over her shoulder, and Spike was sitting on her porch steps, smoking. Good. It was better that she stayed out of this, since she was liable to make things worse if given half a chance. “I was waiting for a good time.”

“There is no good time to tell me you’re sleeping with an evil vampire!” Xander cried. “You’re supposed to be the _Slayer_. _Stake vampires_ , not let them stake you!”

“We are not _sleeping together_ ,” Buffy hissed, and hit him in the shoulder, misjudging his human strength so that he staggered back a little, rubbing it with a sour look on his face. “And it is _none of your business_ who I let — _stake me_!”

“It is when it’s someone who slept with my fiancé — ”

“ — who you _left_ — ”

“ — who I made a _mistake_ with! I can’t believe you’re bringing that up right now! This is not _about_ me.”

“You’re right,” said Buffy, making her voice the icy one that she had always used for rejecting Spike. “It’s _not_ about you. It’s about me and the fact that I can make my own decisions without your help!”

Xander looked torn between being appropriately chastised and still being angry. “I know, of course I know, but _Spike_.”

“Yes, _Spike_ ,” Buffy continued, still cold. “I know you don’t get it, Xander, and I know she’s not perfect, and sometimes I don’t get it either. But she has been — _reliable_.” That wasn’t a ringing endorsement, and she realized she was going to have to do better than that. “She’s been here. For Dawn, for me. Watching my back, listening to me complain — when I couldn’t do that with any of you.” Xander opened his mouth, and she held up her hand and continued. “And she’s funny, and she loves me, and I like spending time with her, and she makes me feel things, and you know, I actually don’t have to justify this to you.”

“I’m not okay with this,” Xander told her. “I’m really not.”

“I’m sorry,” Buffy said, and put her arms around him. “About bringing up Anya.”

“I’m _still_ not okay with this,” Xander said, muffled in her neck, and then he hugged her back. “And I don’t know why _you’re_ okay with it.”

“I know. But you’re gonna have to _get_ okay with it.”

He pulled back, and sighed. “I’m gonna go home, okay, Buff? I’m not really up for a Scooby meeting right now.”

She leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. “Call me if you want to talk.”

He walked away, and after a few minutes of watching him, she turned around and came back to the house. “’bout time you admitted I love you,” Spike said, when she returned, and opened her arm for Buffy to sit down on the step next to her and lean into her body.

Buffy didn’t say anything, and Spike sat there, smoking silently, until Buffy sat up, kissed her on the mouth, and went inside.

**☾☾☾**

When Buffy got back, smelling of fryer grease and annoyance, Spike turned her head, just like she always did, and Dawn made a soft gagging noise. “Evening, pet,” she said, ignoring the teenager, and Buffy took off her hat, looked over at her, and then smiled. Spike felt her heart clench, and kicked herself for being a sap. “How shit was work?”

“Seven on a scale of ten,” Buffy said, and went upstairs. When she came back down, freshly showered and in her pajamas but still smelling faintly of fast food, she climbed onto the couch and curled into Spike’s side. “What are we watching?”

“We’re about twenty minutes out from the end of _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_ ,” Spike answered, doing her best not to move at all while Buffy settled into her.

“Spike picked,” Dawn added.

“Your sister needs to get cultured, Slayer,” Spike replied, and when Buffy let out an amused huff, she decided to count that as a laugh and bent to lay a kiss on Buffy’s temple. Buffy didn’t pitch her off, so she decided to take that as agreement.

She didn’t really manage to pay any sort of attention to the end of the movie, what with Buffy falling asleep against her side. By the time the credits rolled, she was snoring softly, her head resting on Spike’s breast. “Aw,” said Dawn, looking at her. “Wait, don’t tell her I said that.”

“If you’ll go open her bedroom door for me I’ll never mention it, Bit,” Spike told her, and slipped her left arm under Buffy’s knees to pick her up off the couch, standing slowly enough not to jolt the Slayer. It seemed a shame to wake her if she didn’t have to. Dawn took off like a shot for the upstairs, and then ducked under Buffy’s legs on the way back down as Spike started up the stairs with her. She had stopped snoring with the change in position, and slept through getting into the bedroom, but when Spike shifted her in her arms to pull back the covers and lay her inside, she shifted on the sheets and grabbed her by the shirtsleeve of her henley.

“Stay,” she slurred, and Spike decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth even if the girl was 95 percent asleep, slipping into the bed behind her fully clothed, the door still open, and throwing an arm around her slim waist. “Mm,” said Buffy, and stuck her face into Spike’s throat.

“Shh, love,” Spike said, and stroked her hair.

Exhausted from work, Buffy stayed asleep, and in the calm dark with only the sound of Buffy’s breathing to hear, Spike drifted off in fairly short order.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

Buffy woke up to the smell of smoke and the sound of Spike hissing and launching herself off the bed and into its shadow. She dimly remembered asking her to stay the night before, but apparently — stupid vampire — she had forgotten to close the blinds before she had obeyed. She stumbled out of bed on the other side, the side Spike had been sleeping on, to shut out the sun that had fallen on the bedcovers. “All clear,” she said, and Spike rose from the floor, still smoking, and made a low, displeased noise in the back of her throat.

“What a way to wake up,” she grumbled, and that was when Buffy realized that Spike hadn’t closed the door either, which was either a sweet attempt at preserving her virtue, or, more likely, exhibitionistic. There was no way Dawn hadn’t peeked in and seen them cuddling. Spike was fully dressed, clothing rumpled from sleep, and the line of one of Buffy’s pillows was imprinted on her cheek.

“Guess you’re stuck here for the day,” she said.

Spike shrugged. “Eh, long’s I can get to a manhole cover I’ll be — ” She cut herself off when Buffy crawled back onto the bed. “On second thought, yeah, I’m stuck here for the day.”

“Check and make sure Dawn’s gotten off to school and then come back,” Buffy told her, and curled up under the covers. Spike blinked dumbly at her, and before she could speak, Buffy continued, “There’s blood in the fridge.”

She had already fallen back asleep by the time Spike returned with a plate of eggs and two mugs held in the other hand. “Breakfast — ah, fuck,” she said, as Buffy startled upright.

She blinked, half-awake. “You made breakfast? In the kitchen? With the windows?”

“Took some acrobatics. Didn’t mean to wake you up, love. But I know you didn’t eat last night, and you’re already too bloody skinny.”

Buffy glared at her. “I was _going_ to invite you to stay, but actually, have fun in the sewers.”

“I like you skinny,” Spike said, hurriedly, and passed her a mug. “I like you every which way, you’re a sodding goddess, Buffy, is that what you want to hear? I just mean you've got to eat.”

“Uh, Spike, this is blood,” Buffy said, when she tipped the mug up to her mouth and caught the copper smell of it just an instant before it hit her lips. “I didn’t tell you where it was so you could bring me some.”

“That’s on me,” Spike replied, and switched the mugs. This one smelled like coffee, mercifully. “Get more fun mugs and this won’t happen.”

Buffy dug into the eggs, suddenly ravenous, and found them soft and buttery and — “Are these chives? Where the hell did you get chives?”

“Had Bit nick them from your neighbor’s garden for me before she got off to school in exchange for showing her how to play poker later.”

“You’re insane,” Buffy said wonderingly, staring at the plate. Riley had done this before, a couple of times, but his breakfasts had usually involved pancakes made by Tara or pastries from down the street from his dorm. “And the next time you let my sister steal something I’m going to stake you.”

“I am an evil, undead creature of the night,” Spike corrected her, the effect of which was somewhat mitigated by the fact that she was barefoot and disheveled from bed. “And it’s not like they’re going to miss some sodding onion grass.”

“Close the door, Spike,” Buffy told her, and Spike froze with her own mug halfway to her lips, and then grinned.

“Yes, mistress,” she agreed, and kicked it shut, taking a mouthful of hot blood and almost coughing. Buffy grinned at her. “Is this human?”

“It’s for first aid,” she said. “In case you get hurt on patrol.”

Spike looked at her like she had hung the moon, and Buffy finished her eggs, cross-legged on the bed. “Tell me you love me,” she said, when she had finished. Spike almost choked on her blood again, then put it on the dresser next to her and said, bewildered,

“I love you.”

“Tell me you want me.”

“Always want you,” Spike breathed, the way she always had when Buffy asked her that.

“Come here,” Buffy said, then, and set the plate and cup on the bedside table to keep them out of the way for when Spike slid back into bed, looking like she was trying not to hope for anything, but failing.

Buffy pulled her into a kiss, and she went easily, swaying into her body and putting her hands on Buffy’s waist. She tasted like blood, which was kind of disgusting, but it wasn’t like Buffy had never kissed anyone who tasted like blood. She was practically a professional vampire fucker at this point. “I don’t have work until three,” Buffy whispered, when the kiss had to break for her to get oxygen. Spike blinked at her, looking stupefied, color in her cheeks. “Will you stay?”

“Trapped, remember?” Spike said, and kissed her again, pressing her back into the bed. Buffy wound her arms around her shoulders and let Spike run her hands up under her thin pajama shirt, finding her breasts and breathing a little moan into her mouth as she did. “God, Buffy. Want you so _much_.”

“Ask me if I want you,” Buffy told her, and Spike pulled at the hem of her shirt, pulling it up off her head.

“I already know you want me, love.”

“Ask,” Buffy gasped, as Spike sucked the tip of her breast into her mouth. “Ask me.”

“Do you want me?” Spike said, lifting her head to look into her eyes.

“I want you,” Buffy replied. “Ask me if I love you.”

Spike froze. “Buffy, you don’t have to. I don’t need to — ”

“Ask!”

“Do you love me?” Spike said, voice flat, eyes dull.

“I think I could someday,” Buffy told her, and Spike made a wounded noise and fell on her again, kissing wetly down her stomach towards the top of her pajama pants. “Oh, oh — please, I missed you.”

Spike ripped down her pajama pants and pressed her mouth into the space between Buffy’s hips, then to the cleft of her legs, breathing in, which was so animalistic that it made Buffy shiver and try to kick her pajama pants the rest of the way down her legs. Spike kissed the curls there, breath cool on her, and then licked a broad stripe up her, bending to kiss her again when she spread her legs and whined. “Say it again.”

“Missed you,” she said. “Missed this.”

“Me too, kitten,” Spike said, and bent her head to her work, lying between her legs and licking her again, tongue slipping coolly around her clit before she lowered her mouth to suck on it. “Missed your smell, here,” she breathed, raising her mouth just enough to say it before she was lapping at Buffy’s entrance again, using her hands to urge Buffy’s legs around her head. “Missed your taste.”

Buffy slid her hands through her hair, and pulled, earning a groan that vibrated through her body. The white locks were still stiff with gel, and Buffy tugged on them again to grind Spike’s face against her a little harder.

When Spike raised her face enough to look up at her, Buffy made sure that she had her hands on her own breasts, playing with her nipples, and Spike growled.

“I’m going to fuck you into next week,” she said, and Buffy giggled.

“What does that even _mean_?”

Spike leered at her, mouth glistening. “It means I’ve got four fingers and a tongue with your name on them, gorgeous. And about six hours to use ‘em with.”

“Six hours?”

“We’ve gone longer before,” Spike pointed out, and sucked her clit back into her mouth, tongue splitting her open and fingers following it in. She had Buffy wriggling again in a few moments, pressure building behind her pelvic bone as Spike pressed her middle finger against somewhere inside her that made her body light up.

Buffy heard herself scream more than she felt herself doing it. “Again,” she panted, and Spike complied, mouth warming to her and fingers massaging her inside until Buffy twisted nearly off the bed, clamping her thighs around Spike’s ears and shaking through her climax.

“Think we’ve got time for me to do that about twelve more times,” Spike said, raising her mouth before she licked up Buffy’s center again, ending with her wet mouth kissing the thatch of hair between her legs. “Gonna send you off to work bowlegged if it kills me. Won’t be able to touch your thighs together without feeling me there. Have you all hot and bothered behind the cash register. Coworkers’ll wonder what’s got you so dozy.”

Buffy panted, squirming against the pressure of Spike’s tongue. “What about you?”

Spike grinned, wolfish. “I could eat this sweet pussy of yours all day.”

**☾☾☾**

Spike went to sleep in Buffy’s bed after she left, unable to smell anything that wasn’t Buffy on her face, on her fingers, on the sheets, sweaty with her squirming. There were bruises across her throat and breasts, scores down her back from the Slayer’s nails, which was colorfully explained to her at four when Dawn got home and walked in on her sleeping face down in the tangle of sheets.

“You look like you got mauled by a tiger,” she said wonderingly, and Spike made an annoyed noise.

“Go ‘way, Bit. ‘m sleeping.”

“In Buffy’s bed.”

Spike grinned over her shoulder at her. “Yeah, that’s the general idea.”

“So are you two — ” Dawn made a gesture with her hands, and Spike chuckled into the pillow.

“Take out the left hand, turn it on its side, then put it back,” she said. “That’s more like it.”

“Ew,” Dawn said, but she sounded excited. “Are you staying for dinner?”

“Nah, I’ll go out on patrol. Slayer’s going to be at work until late.”

Dawn stuck out her lower lip. “Buy me a pizza and I won’t tell Buffy you told me how you guys have sex.”

Spike looked over her shoulder again, and cracked a smile. “Atta girl. Fine, I will. Now get out and let me sleep.”

Dawn obligingly disappeared.

**✧** **✧** **✧**

When Buffy got back from work that night, Spike opened the door, wearing a black button-down and a new pair of jeans, which meant she must have been back to the cemetery.

“Please tell me — ”

“ — already patrolled,” Spike told her, characteristically prescient about what she was going to say. “And made dinner.”

“She ordered pizza,” Dawn called. “But there’s hot sauce on it, so _stay away_.”

“That’s what you get for blackmailing me,” Spike yelled back at her, and Buffy started laughing, tired as hell and still sore between her legs, and smelling, probably, like the inside of a deep fryer. Spike bent down to claim her forfeit anyway, and swept her into the house, lowering her voice. “Don’t tell her, but there’s a box of garlic knots with your name on it in the fridge.”

Buffy took her by the collar and pulled her down for another kiss. “Don’t eat any. I want you in full working order.”

“I said they’ve got your name on them,” Spike replied, and gave her a wicked grin.

“My hero,” she said sarcastically, and went to find dinner.

**☾☾☾**

Buffy threaded her fingers through Spike's before they stepped through the gate of the graveyard, and Spike bent to kiss her for good measure, drawing a soft content noise and Buffy shoving her away after a few minutes. "I am not having sex with you on a grave," she said, adorable little nose wrinkled, but Spike didn't believe it for a bloody second, particularly given how many graves they had had sex on.

"I'm just kissing you in the gate, love."

"Which always leads to you kissing me on the ground!" Buffy pointed out, pointing her stake at her. "I'm wise to your tricks."

Spike rolled her eyes, and then darted in to kiss her again, smirking when Buffy's arms wound around her neck. "One for the road," she said softly, and then tossed Buffy into the arms of the vampire who was sneaking up on them, apparently drawn to ambush lovers in the night.

He was dust before he got a chance to realize he was ambushing the Slayer, and Buffy looked at her reproachfully.

"I could've died," she said.

"I'm right here, so no, you couldn't've," Spike told her, and wrapped an arm around her waist. "Go fish, Slayer. I'll be home when you get back."

Buffy turned and winked at her. "Get out the new Mr. Pointy. I owe you a good staking for what you just did."

"Right you are, pet," Spike said, grinning, and took off at a run towards her crypt.


End file.
